Unlike the other two, this exercise requires the participation of others:
Autobiographical Narratives
"Consider gathering with a group of two or three trusted friends. Encourage each other to write your individual autobiographies, and then share them with each other. For this to be successful, you may need to meet together for sixty to ninety minutes weekly or biweekly over several weeks or months. There is no perfect formula. What is important is that you are in a group of committed folks who are willing to share their stories as they are. As you proceed, invite God to reveal to each of you not only more about your story, but more about his story - his feelings, thoughts, and images of his mind - as well.
"Pay attention to the nonverbal as well as verbal aspects of the stories that are being read. Participants also need to pay attention to what they feel - the emotions that are evoked within them as they hear each other's stories - and to honor those feelings, being careful never to ignore them but rather permitting these feelings to generate questions they might ask the storyteller.
"Use the five forms of interrogatories...: who, what, where, when, and how. Each question seeks information the listener does not know; more important, expressing them adds to a storyteller's experience of being known.
"When listening to another's story, asking these questions opens the door for the storyteller to reflect on particular facts without becoming emotionally activated by the more charged query of why. Both the storyteller and his or her listeners are able to create deeper bonds of intimacy in a predictable, trustworthy, and safe fashion."
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