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Experiencing Jesus: Ten Meditations for a Changed Life

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This book consists of 10 meditations from different scenes of the Gospels. There is also an accompanying audio CD, performed by actor Martin Sheen and others, that provides the content of the book as guided meditations for prayer.

The meditations are reflections using a combination of Ignatian-style "entering the stories" meditation with Jewish midrash. The words are laid out on the page like poetry, so that they can be read slowly, poetically, in bite-size pieces, allowing the reader to savor the imagery. The writing and imagery itself is wonderful.

The accompanying CD, unfortunately, is not. First, the accompanying violin music is often quite jarringly shrill in tone when being listened to in a quiet and contemplative mood. Second, although Martin Sheen acts the scenes well, expressing all the emotions that are appropriate, the meditations are read FAR, FAR, FAR too quickly! There is simply no time at all to develop the word pictures in the mind because the meditations are practically speed-read. The poetic structure of these meditations are utterly dashed as they are read like pure prose at breakneck speed.

The audio effect is so frustrating as to be a real negative treatment of the book and, sadly, must be ignored to get the real benefit of these meditations. As one of the few books of Christian-specific guided meditation with scripture, I had great hopes for this work. I hope in the future, the CD is re-recorded by someone who is more familiar with presenting audio guided meditations.