A
Mission Ball Story
[This
fictional sketch may give you an idea of what you can personally experience.]
Diane:
We’ve come together today to tell you all about Mission Ball.
We looked at the description of the game and we felt it didn’t capture the
heart of it. So we decided to share
our experiences as we explain the game.
Bill:
Let’s do this: Each person who speaks about a part of the program, please
say why you got involved, and a little about your experience, especially what
you appreciated. Okay?
(Everyone nods yes.)
Diane:
Okay, I’ll start. I’m a twenty-something insurance salesperson.
Ted says I’m a “go-getter” type.
I’m very competitive. I
set high goals for my sales. I like
to be upbeat. When I heard about
Mission Ball, I was naturally attracted to the team competition.
I’m captain of the Red Rovers, and last season we came in second in our
league. It happened to be a very close and exciting finish, but the Blue Nuns
edged us out at the end. When it
was all said and done, however, I was thrilled by how much my team and I had
done. I had earned the Heart Surgeon Award and the Robo-Gandhi Award, which
we’ll explain later. The
eight of us had raised over $2,000 for people living with AIDS, and most of us
had volunteered at an AIDS hospice. You
should have been there at the dinner when we turned over the check. The director told the audience what
our contribution would do. Anyway, for me, and I think for most people, Mission Ball
combines a personal growth program with a way to help others.
Let me tell you about the game, and someone else can explain the awards.
The
object of the game is to do as many positive actions that are a stretch for you
as possible. A stretch is an action
that is new for you, or that is difficult for you.
One game lasts a week and ends in a one-hour scoring session, followed by
a celebration event. In Mission Ball, four teams make up a league.
The teams are known either by the color of their T-shirt or their
“element.” They are:
| Earth-Green (as in trees) |
Air-White (as
in clouds) |
| Fire-Red | Water-Blue |
Our
team was the Red Rovers, mostly a group of friends I recruited, with some of
their friends. This includes Bill, Sandy, Ted and Kimberly.
We played against a team of nuns, the Sisters of the Absolute Presence Of
God, affectionately known as the Blue Nuns, of which Sister Helen here is a
representative; also against Mr. Kim’s business circle, the Green Dragons
including his banker, Mr. Pan, and against Reverend Clark’s, youth group, the
White Knights, including Jason and Tanya.
The
length of a season is usually thirteen weeks. Sometimes the season can be shortened or changed.
The
first eight weeks make up the regular season.
Then come four weeks of playoff games, with each win or loss counting as
one and a half games. By the number
of wins, the two top teams play each other, and the other two teams play each
other. If there is a tie by wins,
then the playoff positions are determined by points.
Jason
will tell you why you joined and what happened in our first season?
Jason:
The Reverend was always after us to do something good for the community,
because it’s the Christian thing to do. But
you know kids. We just want to have fun.
School’s hard enough. But
one day he said there was this new game called Mission Ball, and that right
after each game there was a free meal. I
have to say that I wouldn’t have joined, except for the food and because Rev.
Clark had recruited some girls. Honestly,
I thought that it was silly-to
do good deeds. But then Tanya here
challenged me to a contest, to see which one of us two could do the most good in
a week. She said that any girl
could kick any guy’s butt, and asked if I was too chicken to find out.
Tanya: For
two weeks, he said that it was a fool’s game.
But I just kept telling his friends that he was too scared of losing.
Jason:
Yeah, finally I got mad ‘cause all my friends were teasing me.
So I played. Well, Tanya
kicked my butt 110 to 83. My
friends laughed at me. So I did two
things. I challenged Tanya to a
rematch, and I told my friends that it wasn’t as easy as it looked and I
challenged two of them. The next
week I blew them all away. 158 to
144, 109 and 63.
By
then it was the tenth game, and I had gotten interested in the team competition.
In the early games, the Green Dragons had been on top, because they were
businessmen, and they could score points by writing checks to charity.
But once they reached their donation limit, they went into a slump and the Red
Rovers took the lead because they were doing tree planting and car washes and
stuff. We were in third place,
ahead of the Blue Nuns who were busy with their school.
Well, Reverend Clark sort of lit a fire under us, and someone came and
gave a talk about Sickle Cell Anemia which is our team’s charity.
Well Tanya got the idea that we could recruit people from families of
people with Sickle Cell. Raymond
looked at the schedule and saw that next week we’d be up against the Green
Dragons. He said, wouldn’t it be funny if the White Knights would
slay the Green Dragons? That became
our rallying cry, “Slay the Dragons! Slay the Dragons!”
We even chanted it at the scoring session when we met with the other
teams. Well, we crushed the Dragons, 972 to 568.
It was so cool to think that we could whip some adult businessmen!
Our
next game was against the Blue Nuns and it was surprisingly close. They were
just beginning to recruit from the parents of their school kids.
Luckily, Tanya and LaShelle had recruited the whole church choir.
So it was a key win, 1207 to 1154. Then
we were up against the Red Rovers who had a bad week and beat them.
Suddenly we were in second place in the league!
But then, as Reverend Clark likes to say, "the Sisters got
religion!" They started recruiting different orders of nuns in town, and not only
that, they had sisters in other parts of the country and in Canada too.
We were laughing a lot because at the scoring session these
sixty-year-old ladies were chanting, “God is on our side!
God is on our side!” But
they were clobbering all of us. And they were catching up to the Red Rovers, and clobbered them
in the Mission Bowl, the last game. It
was awesome! They had recruited a
total of fourteen new teams, including one in Canada.
They had also raised a ton of money for the poor kids in their mission in
Latin America.
Bill:
So are you playing now?
Jason:
Yes, but this time, we’re in a league with mostly African-Americans.
No offense, but we want to play with other blacks, for the social time,
and also because it’s a great way to build up the community.
However, we’ve invited the Green Dragons to join us because they said
they would help us start some small businesses, and because Mr. Kim, the banker,
is a black belt in Aikido and he offered to give some classes.
Diane:
Sandy, why don’t you explain what kinds of actions are worth points?
Sandy:
All right, but first I want to say what Mission Ball has done for me.
I’m a single mother who works as a secretary.
I heard about Mission Ball from Sister Helen, but I wanted to join the
Red Rovers because I felt that they were really charged up.
It was the stuff that Sister told me about deciding to live my own life
drama that really hit home. I had a dull job that I felt stuck in, and I escaped
by watching a lot of TV and videos. Sister
Helen told me that instead of being
caught up in fictional drama, I could create my own life drama, simply by
setting a goal that was important to me—a goal that I wasn’t sure I could
reach unless I put my heart into it. The drama was not knowing if I would reach
it. The other team members would
act as my audience, since I would share my progress at each weekly team meeting.
Some
of them would even become co-stars. Kimberly
became my support buddy, and she also baby-sat my two boys so I could begin
classes to be an executive secretary. Now
some tasks that used to be a drudgery are a little fun, because I challenge
myself to do them faster and with more quality—for
points. It helps to have my seven
teammates rooting for me. From time
to time I would get “buddy support” phone calls or notes from them. Sure, they get points for these actions, but you can tell
when someone is sincerely interested in you. It was especially nice when someone
gave me my T-shirt and donated the $10 for registration and the handbook.
It’s fun to share at the team meetings, and it’s fun to meet and talk
with people at the social event. The
end of last season, Diane dragged me over to one of the businessmen and told him
that it would be worth a lot of points if he could take me on as an intern.
He laughed and asked me to send my resumé. Now I’m doing an internship at his factory!
Bill:
What kind of
actions are worth points?
Sandy: Actions
are in four areas. Keep in mind that if you are already doing these actions
regularly, you wouldn’t get any points for them because they are not a stretch
for you. If you do them only
occasionally, you can get some points but not as many as if it was a brand new
stretch for you. Actions can be done individually, for example learning a skill,
or they could be done as a group, for example, planting trees together. The four areas are:
·
Creating a world-sustaining lifestyle. This goes beyond environmentalism and includes actions that
stabilize all our life-support systems
such as the community, politics, the economy, and even personal physical and
mental health. Some examples would
be combining trips with the car to save energy, putting your money into socially
responsible investments, and voting if you don’t vote, or writing letters to
Congress if you do.
·
Empowering others. This
includes supporting or teaching others through volunteering, making donations,
or informally reaching out to others already in our lives.
It also includes recruiting new people into the game.
· Working on personal mission and fulfillment. If you don't already know your personal mission, the idea is to explore and look for your mission; if you do it, the idea is to live it more fully. All in all, the idea is to spend time on the things that you love most, the things that make you feel most alive.
·
Increasing personal capacity. People
have different major personal obstacles. It
might be time management for one person, personal organization for another,
communication skills for a third, and so forth.
Some examples: cutting down watching TV, learning assertiveness, or
cleaning out a drawer that you keep losing things in.
Removing personal obstacles and building skills increase personal
capacity. I also had a lot of work
to do here. One of my biggest
obstacles was believing my life couldn’t change.
Bill:
How are
points assigned?
Sandy:
Players present their point sheets at the beginning of the scoring
session. Because the actions occur
over the week, the players’ point totals are accepted as accurate—the good
old honor system. At all times, however, players are urged to be conservative
in their estimate of points. If it
seems a team member is not being accurate or honest, it’s up to the team,
especially the team captain, to deal with the situation.
Point
values are assigned for many activities, or are estimated by one of a variety of
guidelines. For example: Ten minutes of effort is worth a point for a brand new
activity. So if you volunteered for
an hour, it could be rated at six points. For
a new habit, for example, jogging that you did three times a week for twenty
minutes, it would be six points for each week, up to ten weeks.
After ten weeks, the new behavior is probably a habit, and is no longer a
stretch, so no more points can be awarded for that behavior.
A
lot of this is a matter of judgment. Judgments
can be made in two ways. One is to
select some people who are not competing to be referees.
Another way is for anonymous internal judging. It works like this. Let’s
say that this week we play the Blue Nuns. If
I were doing some action that wasn’t rated, I would telephone someone on one of the
two teams who we weren’t playing that week. I would explain the action, then
he would call someone on another team to make the judgment.
That person wouldn’t know who was doing the action, so he or she would
make a fair judgment.
Diane: A
player can also voluntarily take away points from himself for poor behaviors and
mistakes. For instance, points off
for losing one's temper, hurting someone, for giving up an effort, etc.
In this case, as in all cases, one keeps track of one's own points and
can keep the reasons private. Let
me add that personally, I am thrilled about the game.
I see it both as a way to build up the African American community, and to
increase understanding among different peoples.
It takes young people off of the streets and puts them in touch with
adults and other youth who can be role models.
Tanya: Reverend
Clark, I’d like to ask you what you’ve gotten out of it personally.
Rev. Clark: If you’d ask my wife,
she would tell you I’ve become a better listener.
In fact, when I told her about Mission Ball and showed her the handbook,
she went through it and checked off things she wanted me to work on.
She’s responsible for my winning the Heart Surgeon Award.
Diane:
Could you explain that and the other awards?
Rev. Clark: I’d be happy to.
In the handbook there are nine awards you can win if you do certain
actions. To win the Heart Surgeon,
you need to make a permanent change in each of the four areas of the program.
A permanent change would be either learning a skill, forming a habit, or
breaking a bad habit. In Personal
Mission, I added a time for daily prayer and reflection.
In Increasing Capacity, I learned a new time management system.
In Empowering Others, I learned and used active listening, and in
Sustainable Lifestyles I started a compost pile for the garden.
I was sincerely proud at the closing ceremony when I was given the
certificate, because I had made so many significant changes!
These are changes I expect will last my whole life long!
Well I’ve had my say. Kimberly,
you had your class do several of the awards.
Why don’t you explain some of them?
Kimberly: Sure! I have a junior high social studies class, and the schools now are big on service learning. So it wasn’t hard to talk the principal and other teachers into trying this Mission Ball program. And the kids got really excited about the different awards. The Robo-Gandhi Award goes to anyone who makes at least one stretch a day, on average. The Martin Luther King, Jr., Other-Centered Person Award is for those doing eight community actions. The Screenwriter-Director-Star! Award is for creating and living your own personal drama. The Composer-Conductor Award goes to anyone doing two empowerment actions a day for 48 days. One action is for yourself, and the other empowers someone else. That award is neat because you record your actions on sheet music paper.
Ted:
So Kimberly, what did you personally get out of Mission Ball?
Kimberly: Well, I’m not much of a
competitor. Sometimes I even forget to write down my points.
My main reason for being in the game is that it’s a way to be with and for
others. I was glad to help
Sandy, and I enjoy the team meetings where we’re all helping each other grow.
That’s my mission, I suppose, to be supportive of others.
Also, another benefit is coming up for me. Our family stopped having reunions and it’s a shame. I’ve been missing my cousins and nephews and nieces. So I got the idea to form everyone into a league. It’s going to be only a seven-week season, but I think that it’s going to be great fun and bring everyone together. I can’t wait to tell you all how it goes!
Bill:
How are players added
to the game?
Sr. Helen: Recruiting people into the game is worth a lot of points.
New players can be added to teams after a league starts, until they reach their
capacity. Instead of joining the conference is already in season, most go into a
new league. Here is how it worked
with us.
As
Jason said, it took our team a while to “get religion.”
We were just three sisters at first, and we would slowly add about a
player a week. The most you can
have is nine players, but it’s best to have about seven.
Otherwise the team meetings can get too long.
To
start new leagues off with a lot of good energy, new team members are encouraged
to come to our scoring session as spectators.
Also, when the team has only one, two or three members, they can
piggyback onto our team meetings and scoring sessions.
It’s always sad when they have to go out on their own, but even birds
have to eventually push their fledglings out of the nest.
In any case, the new teams rarely have the same number of players.
So their scores are weighted, both in regard to the number of players and
the number of total days played, since people can start on any day of the week.
At
the end of the season, after the playoff game, people are free to change teams,
or reorganize so they are playing with people of similar seriousness and skill.
A player can move to a more difficult league if he or she qualifies, but
may want to stay with the same team if a bond of friendship has formed.
Leagues might form along age range, or by company, or geographically, as
in any other team sport, but hopefully people will be open to keeping some
diversity on the teams.
When
we recruited our Sisters in Montreal, St. Louis, Detroit and Chicago, the teams
competed by way of a chat room on the Internet.
We did that for the last five weeks of the season.
Now I’ve heard from my sisters there is at least one full league of
four teams in each city. I’m so
excited that Mission Ball is catching on! Personally,
I love how balanced it is! Half is for personal growth, and half is for helping
others. Most of us sisters,
including myself, focus too much on helping others.
It’s wonderful to have a program that forces us to look at ourselves,
yet not exclusively.
I
should add that it’s bound to happen that a few team players will drop out.
In the event of a major personal crisis, a player may need to drop out
for several weeks or for the season. Teams
are encouraged to support their players, whether or not they are big scorers.
Teams that lose players can recruit others to take their place, to get
back up to seven players. In order
to maintain attendance at the scoring event, there is no point averaging for
lost players. The team is
encouraged to find a new permanent player as soon as possible.
If the player feels s/he will only be out temporarily, the team should
find a temporary replacement for as many days as needed.
Mr.
Pan, can you talk about the team meeting and scoring session?
Mr. Pan: Yes, I would be happy to.
The team meeting is really a support group for helping with personal
growth and goal-attainment. Each member gets to make three reports.
The first is on what they are learning, or information they would like to
learn; the second is on their progress since the last meeting and their plans
until the next meeting; and the third report is on something they have
appreciated, some positive experience. Following
these reports, time is allowed for a general discussion or exercise that relates
practically to development of some of the group members.
This Goal & Growth Group format has been in use for over ten years
and provides solid support in personal goal-attainment and growth.
The scoring event lasts about an hour and ends with the celebration potluck. Towards the end of the dinner the teams can meet individually for a brief strategy and encouragement meeting, perhaps for just five minutes, perhaps ending with a cheer.
As
for the scoring session, it usually takes place in a medium-sized room in a
school, place of worship or community center.
The players, and probably a few spectators, arrive and mingle.
Players may have a little preparation to do, adding and checking their
scores. Seats are placed pointing
toward an open center that acts as a stage.
Seats are in four groups, one for each of the teams.
Each grouping is usually three seats in the inner row and four in the
outer row. Competing teams face
each other. Spectators sit behind
one of the teams. One of the four team captains is pre-selected to be
emcee for the week. If there are any spectators, he or she gives a brief
overview of the event.
The
first quarter is announced and briefly explained for the spectators. It might be "empowering others" or any of the other
three areas. A member of each team
reads off some of the accomplishments of their team members in that area, either
anonymously or with name given, depending on whether or not the person wants it
to be known. Meanwhile, the points
are added up by the team record keeper. Then
the competing team in that day's pairing announces their actions.
There is a limit of about a minute for each team to read accomplishments.
Each person in the first pair announces the score for their team, and it is put
on a flip chart for all to see. Then
the second pair of teams follows suit. For
example, the score at the end of the first quarter might be Red over White, 280
to 246, and Blue over Green, 299 to 207.
There
is a "live-action" way to score additional points for each quarter
right at the meeting. A member of the team can present a brief two-minute
summary of some breakthrough or learning by a team member or someone they have
been helping. The points would be
awarded by the two noncompeting teams to only one team for each of the four
presentations-
like the way gymnastics or skating are scored
in the Olympics. The score is based
on a combination of delivery and how inspiring
or educational the presentation was.
While we’re adding scores, teams get to do their cheers or
entertainment. Sometimes they sing. It
was inspiring when the sisters sang Climb
Every Mountain.
Our
league has had some great high points. There
was the time that Diane announced that one of the members of one of the CPR
classes she taught had resuscitated a little girl who had been electrocuted.
There was the time when Tanya announced that, thanks to the support of
one of the White Knights, a girl had made the difficult decision to turn in her
father for abuse. There was the announcement made by the sisters that they had
collected enough money to build a 24-seat, one room school building in El
Salvador. The Red Rover’s announcement they had planted 1,000 seedlings in a
week in the Allegheny forest brought cheers. Also, there was the sad time when
one of the businessmen announced that because of the work he and his wife had done on
personal mission, they had made the difficult decision to divorce.
One
of my favorite moments of each week is during the Acknowledgment ceremony that
immediately follows the scoring session. After
we mention the high scorers and the winning teams, we summarize the number of
actions, the amount of donations and number of new players. Then the emcee ends the ceremony with the words, “This week
we changed the world. Next week
we’ll change it again!”
When the sisters announced they had started teams in other cities and
Canada, and had raised a school building in El Salvador, I got goose bumps when
I thought of how we really were changing the world.
Now my friend, Mr. Kim, is looking into exporting Mission Ball to South
Korea. To finish this program, I
would like him to talk a little about the spirit of Mission Ball.
Mr. Kim: Thank you Mr. Lee.
As in any sport, we have some star players who raise Mission Ball to an
art form. They play with heart and
concentration, making the best, most loving use of their time.
They play with imagination and creativity, and are able to create their
own style of action. They are an
inspiration to watch and be around.
Unfortunately,
there are also some people who are too competitive and too point-oriented. They
use the scoring session as a way to show off and brag, but it is really for
sharing what one has appreciated, and for passing on ideas for action.
If a person or a team seems to be unbalanced, for example, spending too
much effort on their personal fulfillment and not as much for others, another
team member or team can challenge or dare them to do a balancing action, and
suggest a certain number of points for it.
I often tell people who are overly enthusiastic about Mission Ball something that Mr. Lee told me. If you come upon a group of people on a sidewalk that is looking up into the sky, you will do one of two things. If they seem respectable, you will look up too, to find out what they are looking at. But if they seem like fanatics or crazy people, you will steer a big circle around them. In Mission Ball we are optimistic. We are looking up. People have often asked me why I have done certain actions. When I told them, many have been attracted to join. But I have heard that some people are so zealous that they scare away people. That is why I lead by example, and only later quietly invite people to attend a scoring session as a spectator.-That is, if they don’t ask me first.
Finally,
I would like to add a few words about Mission Ball. It seems to me very much
like the martial art of Aikido. Aikido
means “the art of peace.” The
founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, said that the art of peace is to fulfill
that which is missing. Mission Ball
with its support group, its Action Menu, its theme of living your personal
mission drama, and its social time offers many things that may be missing in
your life and the lives of others. Master Ueshiba also said, “Those who are
enlightened never stop forging themselves.”
So that, each time we make a stretch, we forge ourselves in a new way. By changing ourselves, we change the world one day and one action
at a time.
In
Mission Ball, so many diverse people come together to support and challenge each
other to refine themselves and to bathe each other in kindness. Each of us has a path and we can assist one another.
Master Ueshiba said a wonderful thing that expresses the heart of this
game that is no game. He said, “Each and every master, regardless of the era or
place, heard the call and attained harmony with heaven and earth.
There are many paths leading to the top of Mount Fuji, but there is only
one summit—love.”
I
am grateful for this chance to speak to you today. Just remember: our words can
never take the place of the actual experience, which you must live
to understand. I wish each of you new players good luck.
Top of page Copyright 2009, World Peace One
