I'm not a swimmer. I could dog-paddle for a short time if necessary but no more than that. I remember two times in my adult life when I knew drowning was a real possibility. Once when I was taken out by a current and a huge wave came down on me. All the while I was summersaulting under water I was aware I'd lost my sense of direction — that I didn't know where up was. The second time as a teenager I was with a wrong group who insisted on taking a rubber dingy out onto the rough ocean at night. We'd all had too much to drink but I had the presence of mind to stay resolute — "I'm not getting into that thing." While pressured by the others, I felt as if my feet were stuck in sand. That I had the wherewithal to do that was strength from heaven.
But this photographed medal I wear has a salvific story behind it too. I was a much younger priest and doing weekend Mass coverage for a parish to which I'd never been. After the first Mass a man approached me and asked for me to remember his ailing mother at Mass and to light a candle for her recovery. I did both. The next week in appreciation he invited me to his home for dinner. It was a Sunday afternoon in winter and before GPS had been invented. I drove seemingly "forever" through the backwoods on icy dirt roads, without turns identified or other houses in sight anywhere — just fields and woodland. The sun was setting when I arrived at his compound-like property of an old farmhouse, a barn and a large modular building with a metal roof. At dinner, without any warning, he took out a pistol and put it on the table between us. He had identified himself as a fish distributor and during the meal took a phone call from a supplier who made him unhappy. The phone call got testy before it was over.
I detest guns and asked him to put the pistol away. Afterwards he showed me the modular building which contained a large number of old but still working pinball machines lining the perimeter walls. I declined the invitation to play with the machines. But running through the center of the large room was a long glass cabinet filled with souvenirs and Americana memorabilia. It seems as if a kind of magnet drew me to the middle of the glass topped cases where I saw this antique silver medal placed flat on a cloth. The medal seemed totally out of place, was clearly handcrafted with a Renaissance styled Mary etched into the thin silver disc, the Infant Jesus coming out of his bath, the traditional lily in a vase to the right and hatched lines throughout. I asked, but he knew nothing of its creation, history or even how it had come his way. I found it to be uniquely delicate and that it seemed to be without a home. So I genuinely asked if I could buy it from him, hoping he'd state a price I could afford. Instead, he opened the case and gave it to me. At the same time I felt the menacing energy had been deflated or dispersed. I rather quickly made my excuses and got back to my car, driving home in the dark. The medal is a treasure, so I don't wear it when working outdoors for fear of it falling off the chain.
But in a dream recently I do lose the medal and after a frantic search through the grass I find it pressed into the ground sideways — as if it's sliced the ground with just an edge sticking out. With tweezer-like fingers, I'm able to free it from the ground and lay it flat in my open hand.
I don't know if that night I was in any real trouble or what the man's agenda was, if he even had one, but the energy wasn't good and I felt unsafe. I was reading recently about the small Bavarian city of Rottach-Egern and that during the First and Second World Wars the people placed their city under the protection of Our Lady of Egern. Happily — wondrously, the city remained unscathed.
Renaissance Lady of the anonymous silversmith,
Renaissance Lady of the glass case,
Renaissance Lady of happy finding,
Renaissance Lady of a gun too close,
Renaissance Lady of an unsettling night,
Renaissance Lady of the lily-clean heart,
thank you for your protection —
safeguard me still.
