I began to see that presence isn’t about doing more. It's about noticing who's already around me.
Featured
When the Game Falls Apart and People Show Up
A Giants blowout is nobody's idea of a good night. But something unexpected happens when the scoreboard stops mattering and the people next to you suddenly do.
Mike Edwards·May 28, 2026
The People on My Block Every Morning
San Francisco is one of the most diverse places in the country. But statistics don’t tell you what it actually feels like to live alongside people whose lives look nothing like yours. Mike Edwards reflects on what it takes to really see your neighbors.
Mike Edwards·May 28, 2026
Recent Posts
Neighborhood notes, presence, and shorter reflections from San Francisco.
Ana came to Proxima during a season when life felt rushed and disconnected. Work, family, and city life left little room for stillness or deep relationships. ...
When Being Together Stopped Needing a Reason
A question around a kitchen table that wouldn't leave me alone. On presence, productivity, and what it actually means to be with someone in a city that never slows down.
When Going It Alone Stops Working
There's a quiet efficiency in going it alone — until there isn't. What changes when we stop treating the people nearby as competition and start seeing them as collaborators?
Recent Articles
Long-form essays and deeper reflections on faith, presence, and life in the city.
The People I Used to Walk Past
In his early years in San Francisco, Mike Edwards saw unhoused neighbors as a public problem. A Labor Day spent grilling with them in Golden Gate Park began a reorientation. This article traces the two relationships every San Franciscan is already building and argues that in a post-Christian city, spiritual formation often runs horizontally before it runs vertically.
Nobody Knows Where the Power Is
San Francisco runs on the conviction that power is real, locatable, and worth chasing. This article traces that conviction from a British politician who spent his career looking for it, to the ancient city of Ephesus — another power center — where a first-century follower of Jesus named Paul discovered something unsettling: that the power he carried worked differently from the power everyone else was after. Drawing on the work of C.S. Lewis and the historical record of early Christianity, the article argues that the desire for control and the desire for genuine transformation are not the same thing — and that the latter tends to arrive through an open hand rather than a closed fist.
The City That Fills Every Silence With Something To Do
In a city as fast and optimized as San Francisco, activity has quietly become the assumed purpose of spending time with another person. This article examines how urban pace reshapes how people relate to one another — turning presence into a byproduct of productivity and leaving many people lonely despite full calendars. Drawing on observations from daily life in the city, it argues that genuine attention to the person in front of you is not a passive act but a deliberate, countercultural one — and perhaps the place where connection actually begins.