On Sunday morning shortly before the end of our 11a Gathering many in our community witnessed an incomprehensible tragedy. A security guard in the neighborhood was struck by an outbound 14 bus and pinned underneath directly across the street from the Chronicle building (where IKON Gathers weekly).

I can’t begin to tell you how unbelievably proud I was of our community’s instantaneous response. Kris Wilkow, Mabi Knittel, Michael Connolloy and Deborah Ramsgard (two first responders and two nurses) sprinted out the door and underneath the bus to check his vitals, to pray with him, and to keep him calm until the Fire Department arrived. Caleb Bowers ran down the street and directed traffic while several others worked to care for some of the witnesses and the MUNI driver, Kari Hayden led a prayer inside the Chronicle building for the man and his family. It was an amazing response of love and courage in the face of such a horrific incident.

That evening I received word that the man died from his injuries at the hospital late in the afternoon. Please be in prayer for his family, for comfort and peace. Be in prayer for the MUNI driver and the witnesses who experienced something horrific today. And please be in prayer for those within our community who were with the man underneath the bus as they begin to process the events of that morning.

There are several who have expressed a desire to reach out to the family of this man and provide them with support. Although the hospital has released his name, the family has expressed a desire for privacy and space as they grieve and wrestle through what is next. If down the road they desire any help, we have a team of people who are ready to care and support the family in whatever ways they need.

I am extremely proud of how our community rushed into action so quickly. I love our boldness and our eagerness to rush in and make a difference. Despite the difficulty of this mornings events, I am proud of you.

Here’s the Wordle of tomorrow’s message at IKON. I wonder what we’ll be talking about as we kick off this next series: Love Wins.

Scala & Kolacny Brothers burst onto the musical scene with their cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”, which was used in the movie trailer to promote The Social Network. Their sound is exquisitely beautiful yet haunting, which makes a perfect soundtrack for a short story. The video below uses Scala & Kolancy Brothers cover of Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody” to narrate a truly heartbreaking story…

The weight of this story is heart-wrenching. I simply can’t wrap my mind nor my heart around what is taking place. To what level of despair would a couple have to get descend in their marriage for something like this to occur? Is there somehow some sense of beauty here? (I’m having a really hard time finding it if there is.) No matter what this video is a haunting parable of despair and love. Anyone have any thoughts?

I stepped on the bus and worked my way through the crowd at the front nearly getting knocked over as I tried to find a single opening to stand when out of nowhere a massive opening emerged and not only was I able to stand but there were several empty seats right in front of me. (This isn’t a normal occurrence during the morning rush hour on the 10-bus to the Financial District.) I paused for a moment, looked around and took a seat. It wasn’t until I settled in that I realized why these seats around me were nearly vacant.

To my left sat a man hidden behind a newspaper. As he lowered the paper in a jerky, almost spastic fashion he revealed his unshaven, unkempt appearance, complete with a slight odor. The spastic nature of his movements continued on as he began to mumble, speaking to himself, laughing, grunting, moving from side to side in a random, twitchy sort of way. This is why no one was sitting down, this is why everyone else chose to stand and be randomly tossed about as the MUNI driver made his sudden stops, starts and bus tipping turns.

As I looked around at the people’s demeanor it was quite obvious that although no one was looking at this man, they certainly felt his presence: clutching their briefcases a little closer, closing their jackets a little tighter and tensing their body a little more. One man stood chuckling to himself as he glanced at the man from time to time. As I sat a mere 12 inches from the man listening to his grunts and mumbles, I held my bag a little closer, tensed my body a little more and looked as straight ahead as possible until my stop came and I quickly exited the bus.

As I walked the few blocks to the coffee shop I would inhabit for the rest of the morning I wondered about my reaction to this man and questioned what love looks like in that situation. Could I have treated him differently, responded to him differently that would have created an in-breaking of the Kingdom?

San Francisco is home to over 15,000 homeless people. It’s not hard to step over them every single day, ignore them as you pass them by and treat them as invisible people. When inundated with such poverty in the midst of such beauty it’s easy to overlook the ugly, the downtrodden, the hopeless and focus our attention on the spectacular and beautiful things of the city. This is a daily situation that takes shape in different forms and yet each day I feel farther and farther away from knowing how to respond. Poverty, homelessness in the urban environment is a systemic problem that requires some sort of revolution in order to change. Until we learn to see the people behind the poverty, change is far away.

How does the Kingdom break into this kind of system and how does an individual affect change one day at a time by learning to see the people behind the poverty?