AN IMPROBABLE WELL

Over the 4th of July weekend, my wife and I drove to Sunset Triangle for coffee, which we had not done in a long time. During my leadership years between 2012 to 2018, I frequented a neighborhood called Silver Lake in Los Angeles over countless weekends. The specific area my wife and I came to often is called Sunset Triangle Plaza, which sits on Sunset Blvd on the corner of Edgecliff Drive. It is a piece of triangular land that comprises a tiny park and a larger than usual pedestrian-only street. The area also features a small outdoor farmer’s market twice a week. The farmer’s market scene is the closest thing to the traditional market scene in Korea without the soul-tugging foods. Silverlake has witnessed significant gentrification since the late 1990s and is now called “the eastside,” cognizant of the more famous “sibling” westside area that is closer to the beaches. I have not counted but would guess that Silver Lake probably possesses more vegan restaurants and cafes than most neighborhoods in LA.

One of the reasons why I was attracted to this plaza was because it was so radically different from my immediate placid neighborhood in Pasadena. I did not mind the 15-mile drive over many weekends to visit a café. The one I visited often used to be called Night and Day, which has since closed. It resembled more of a tattoo parlor than a café. Night and Day was gritty and even grungy but had decent coffee. The most attractive feature of the café for me was the outdoor seating where I got to sip my Americano or Cold Brew and just sit and engage in people-watching. I would bring my books and spend hours alternating between the worlds of my book, reflection, and what my eyes were tracing. I do not recall which was more real, my reflection or the people I got to watch. Strangely, the times I spent there were therapeutic and refreshing enough that I came back again and again. 

Sunset Triangle Plaza is a microcosm of what LA is about. One can see all kinds of people of various ethnicities, genders, and wealth. It is quite a common sight to see homeless folks sitting or lying in the park and even mingling occasionally with the young and diverse affluent folks. As my wife and I sit in the same unadorned outdoor seating after years have gone by, I see a purple taco truck (go Lakers!), a seemingly popular brand-new vegan restaurant, and an always hopping Taiwanese restaurant right next to the café. I see a guy wearing a t-shirt that says, “Save the Bees” and observe a young proud father taking a picture of his son right in front of me with his mom watching, which brings me the gift of a smile. All the while, I notice the stark contrast of the trees that are struggling to transition to fuller green from brownish green due to extreme drought this season while the sky is impeccably blue. 

I am fond of this area mainly because I did some of the most grinding soul’s work here while soaking in the real and vibrant humanity right in front of me. It was the most unlikely and improbable well for my soul’s thirst and nourishment during my dark valley days. While I wish I can say I saw each person as full and glorious God’s image-bearers, my soul was generous and expansive enough to extend tacit blessings without judgment, especially to those who seemed very different from me. I suppose as I was learning to be self-compassionate, I would like to believe that self-compassion led to compassion for others. In some ways, the last thing I wanted to do was to pick an imaginary fight with the rest of humanity. I knew my soul would suffer more and thus lose every single time. . . 

While my eyes alternated between watching the surrounding scene in front of me and reading David Whyte’s poems, my eyes locked in on the poem called The Well. (I won’t quote everything here but two portions.) The beginning stanza opens,

Be thankful now for having arrived,
for the sense of having drunk from a well,
for remembering the long drought
that preceded your arrival and the years
walking in a desert landscape of surfaces
looking for a spring hidden from you so long
that even wanting to find it now had gone
from your mind until you only remembered
the hard pilgrimage that brought you here,
the thirst that caught in your throat;
the taste of a world just-missed
and the dry throat that came from a love
you remembered but had never fully wanted
for yourself, until finally after years making
the long trek to get here it was as if your whole
achievement had become nothing but thirst itself.

The phrases “a spring hidden from you so long” and “hard pilgrimage” immediately caught my imagination. It is here at this café that I found a hidden spring for my soul. The café became a spring when I first discovered Richard Rohr’s writings. The first book I read by him was The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective. I was hooked by both Rohr’s style and content as well as the Enneagram wisdom and tradition. From Rohr, I migrated over to Merton and countless other saints and spiritual teachers, both contemporary and historical, mostly from the wider ecumenical tradition. It all started here at Sunset Triangle, the most unlikely and unassuming place for a spring well.

“If your whole achievement had become nothing but thirst itself” was difficult to accept and swallow at the time. The crown of achievement culminated in making the long trek without quitting and accepting and experiencing thirst. Desperation had become the crown of my achievement. So ironic and yet true. Now my experience of deep thirst can be shared as a thirst-quenching well without disrupting others’ own sacred journey of experiencing thirst alone. Then the last stanza. . . 

No, the miracle had already happened
when you stood up, shook off the dust
and walked along the road from the well,
out of the desert toward the mountain,
as if already home again, as if you deserved
what you loved all along, as if just
remembering the taste of that clear cool
spring could lift up your face and set you free.

I find myself walking along the road from the well out of the desert toward the mountain “as if already home again and as if you deserved what you loved all along” and “set you free.” I resonate with the poetic justice of deserving what I loved all along which to me was to be free. This is a very personal reading of these last verses, of course. I am grateful for having drunk from a well that has a clear physical attachment to it. Today, sitting and sipping cold brew, quenching my thirst, at the familiar Sunset Triangle “well” gave me an unexpected opportunity to look back on the road I traversed and to look forward to the mountain road ahead of me.