St. Francis and Trayvon Martin

I am certainly not the first to weigh in on the Trayvon Martin shooting. It's obviously a horrific tragedy anytime a young life is cut short. The nation's heart goes out to the community and especially to the family of the victim.

But there is something larger here. Time will tell if Mr. Zimmerman had reason to be suspicious of the young Mr. Martin, or if he was acting on some amalgam of paranoia, hatred, fear, prejudice, or something else. The bigger, more systemic issue is the stand-your-ground laws that exist in Florida and 21 other states. I understand people's right to self-defense, although I still have concerns about deadly force in self-defense. But if someone feels threatened, and the threatening party then retreats...I'm not confident that the threatened person should have the legal right of pursuit.

Again, the specifics of this particular case are still unfolding, and there are likely facts and issues that we have not yet heard. There always are. But I shudder to think that there are laws on the books that encourage the threatened party becoming the threatening party.

Here's where St. Francis comes in. I believe that if I were a Catholic, I could easily be a Franciscan. I consider myself one at heart. As recounted by one of my spiritual mentors, Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, St. Francis is said to have both tamed a wolf and embraced a leper. In his day, lepers were the most unclean people imaginable, and Francis supposedly had used to be appalled by them. But then, in a moment of inspired compassion, his heart broke and he embraced a leper that he saw along the road, giving this poor soul the first human contact in the person's life. According to the other story, a town in Italy was being terrorized by a wolf, which attacked livestock and people. Francis set out to do something though he had no idea what. The beast was savage and wild. But after praying and talking to the wolf (which apparently was not out of the ordinary for Francis!), he walked right up and treated him as we would a family pet. These two legends (factual or not) illustrate two struggles in our souls that must be faced: embracing the other/outcast and taming the beast that is within us.

All of us must face these two challenges of life to one degree or another. We can become so insular, so tribal, at times that we have difficulty even seeing the other, let alone identifying or empathizing. In this latest tragedy, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of both the persecuted victim—whether it was real or perceived; is there truly a difference?—and the scared, suspicious alleged shooter. Why do we ever feel the need to shoot first and ask questions later, so much so that we legislate the right to do so?

This incident—with its specific and horrific tragedy—is also a morality play for us all. We are all of us Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, facing at times the leper and the wolf. How we respond is up to us.