WHAT JOB WOULD
TEACH A PERSON
PATIENCE THE MOST?

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “What Job Would Teach a Person Patience the Most?”

Friday afternoon I was sitting in the front seat of a Dillon Bus coming back from Malvern, Pennsylvania, with some of our high school seniors. We had just made a 4 day retreat, called a “Kairos Retreat”. As we came around a bend – on Route 97 – here in Maryland – before hitting Route 50 – on the 2 hour and 45 minute trip back, suddenly we were in the traffic jam.

I began reflecting on the issue of patience. I wanted to get home by 4 P.M. I thought to myself: a bus driver better have the gift of patience – or develop patience skills. Then I began wondering whether some jobs demand more patience than other jobs. Would an impatient driver become more skilled in patience, if they became a bus driver – or would they quit and get another job?

Then I found myself wondering, “Are some jobs tougher to be patient in than others?”

I began thinking that teachers and parents of little kids – as well as of teenagers have a tougher job – with patience – than dealing with kids in the 4th and 5th grades. Is that correct? Is that an, “It all depends?” What about being a parent or teacher with kids who have ADD – Attention Deficit Disorder? What about parents with kids on drugs? What about parents whose kids are dating a disaster waiting to happen?

What about toll collectors on the Bay Bridge – going east? I always try to say something nice to those toll collectors, because I would think that’s a tough job – yet I never asked someone who did that for a living, “What’s it like to be a toll collector.”

What about being a Driving School Instructor? Would that be a tough job because you're sitting there with a person learning how to drive? I know some spouses go crazy with their other half - when the other starts blurting or yelling out, "Slow down!" or "You're too close to that car in front of you!" Patience! Patience! Patience!

What about Air Traffic Controllers? Is that the most stressful job on the planet?

What about people out of work – who have sent out 50 resumes and nothing comes in the mail but bills?

As I was thinking about all this – while crawling along in the bus, the bus driver spotted flashing lights ahead and said, “There’s the problem?” I was thinking it was Friday afternoon traffic heading for the Eastern Shore backing up – much further away than usual. Nope it was two cars who had a fender bender.

How about people who come out into a parking lot and find their car dented or hit by some stupid idiot? I remember someone telling me they found a note on their windshield, “Sorry I hit you. I have to leave a note because someone is watching me!” And it wasn’t signed.

TODAY’S READINGS

It’s the Third Sunday in Advent – and Christmas is getting closer and I figured I’d be preaching on “Rejoicing” or “Joy” because today is the so called, “Gaudete Sunday” or “Rejoice Sunday” - half-way through Advent.

I picked up today’s readings to see what to preach on and surprise the second reading from The Letter of James begins, “Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.”

Then James chooses the occupation of farmer as an example of someone who needs patience. “See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and late rains.”

Then I realized the whole second reading is all about patience – not complaining – not judging one another – but patience – so I said, “Why not a sermon on patience?” – and flesh out my thoughts from my bus ride on Friday afternoon a bit more.

On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most patient, how patient am I?

I have a long fuse – meaning, I’m usually calm – but behind the mask – behind the smile – I can be impatient at times. I know the things I don’t understand or can’t stand at times – the things that bug me.

ROBERT B. DAUGHERTY

Thinking about today’s second reading, I began wondering if the farmer has to be the most patient of jobs.

I remembered or recalled that I read an obituary in The Washington Post just a few weeks back about the inventor of those big circular irrigation systems I saw many times while working in rural Ohio and various other places – as well as from the air.

I couldn’t remember the inventor’s name of course – but I asked myself, “Was he an impatient farmer – who couldn’t wait for rain – and wanted the rain to come to him?”

I love the saying, “Pray for potatoes, but pick up a shovel?”

“Pray for corn, but make sure you plant?”

I went to Google and sure enough by typing in: “Obituary: Inventor of circular irrigation system” I got on the first hit, “Robert B. Daugherty – 88 – dies November 27, 2010, in his home near Omaha, Nebraska.”

I found out that he was a farmer from a farm family – who went to Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. After serving as a forward artillery observer in the Marine Corps during World War II, he came home to start his life.

At the suggestion of an uncle, he invested $5,000 in a machine shop in 1946. He was one of three workers in the small business that built grain elevators and other farm equipment.

In time – with lots and lots of problems and lots and lots of adjustments and experiments his company developed the circular pivot irrigation system. The obituary said that 42 percent of all the irrigated farms in the United States that use irrigation systems, use the center pivot method that he developed. It added that 75 percent of some Western States – use his method. The article told me that he didn’t wait around waiting for rain as the farmer in the Second Reading did. He had the patience to work till he came up with a method of bringing rain and water – for irrigating farm lands.

I liked two stories in the obituary.

1) “Mr. Daugherty, who became a millionaire many times over, believed nepotism could ruin a successful business and would not allow any of his three sons to join his company.”

2) “By the mid-1960s, Mr. Daugherty had solved the manufacturing problems of the center pivot, and it quickly took hold throughout the Plains states and the West. Then the story added, “In 1972, he received an insistent call from former president Lyndon B. Johnson, whose center pivot at his ranch in Texas had stopped working. / ‘My oats are a-thirstin',’ Johnson said. / Mr. Daugherty dispatched a crew to make sure the president's oats got their water.”

Moral of the story: be patient, but make phone calls. Be patient, but don’t just pray for rain. Invent an irrigation system to get that water onto your land – when you need rain.

THREE CONCLUSIONS – BUT BE PATIENT – THE THIRD CONCLUSION IS LONGER THAN THE FIRST TWO

1) I would assume that some people are more patient than others – without any effort on their part. They got it as a gift. Is that true? I don’t know. I’ll patiently think about it.

2) I would assume that some people are more patient than others because of their job or their life situations. I would assume that women are more patient than men – because of their bodies and especially dealing with the 9 months it takes to sculpt and form a baby in their womb. Is that true? I’ll patiently think about it.

3) I would assume that some people work on being patient.

On this retreat I was on this week, I was sitting there in this big meeting room with about 50 kids and some small groups were not finished yet – and we had to wait for them.

Some boys found a ball - smaller than a soccer ball but bigger than a tennis ball and they were kicking it in the back section of the room – indoor mini-soccer and I found myself getting nervous that they might break something. It wasn’t my property – but the place is rather kid friendly. I didn’t say a word.

I thought about that. Was I being patient or was I refusing to be the grouch? I remember saying as a kid about a grouch on our block in Brooklyn when we were playing stick ball and the ball would go into his front yard and he would yell at us – and I said to myself, then and there, “I hope I’ll never be a grouch when I’m an old man.” I also remembered another time playing hit with a yellow plastic bat and catch with my nephew in my mom’s living room and my mom said, “Andrew you’ll never grow up so be careful!” And sure enough I threw a ball to my nephew and he swung and hit the ball and the ball broke a lamp. My mom laughed and said, “Told you so!” Life. Patience.

Down through the years I have lived with a few priests who were alcoholic and I learned experientially that there are people who stop drinking and become so called, “Dry drunks!” real pains in the rear and people who become sober because they integrated the spirituality of the 12 steps of AA and changed beautifully from within.

I remember hearing a talk on Mental Health once by a Jesuit priest psychiatrist, James Gill, who reported on a method of learning patience for people who are Type A people and tense up because of incompetence and stupidity and long lines – and they pay for it with pains in their hearts and minds and tight hands and blood vessels. They are told whenever they are in a store and there are a couple of lines, always stand on the longest line – and then when you get close to the front get off that line and go back on another line. Next, while standing on the line, you are to think of the names of grammar school classmates or the names of the players on some sports team from when you were a kid or what have you.

Moral of this third and last point: one can learn to be patient.

Suggestion: ask us priests to make our sermons longer.

Smile! Just kidding!