BEAUTY IN BROKEN PLACES

Yamadori is elegance and strength born through adversity and brokenness

Beauty In Broken Places

The art and essence of bonsai making is finding beauty in broken places and capturing nature's best expression portrayed in gorgeous submission. It is finding perfection through imperfection, exceptional beauty in seemingly flawed appearance. Bonsai form is elegance and strength born through adversity and brokenness.

Bonsai making rarely starts from seed nor from young plant or lush tree grown under ideal setting like the way seedlings are grown and nurtured in nurseries. The specimens for bonsai making are collected from the wild and harsh environment which referred to by the Japanese as yamadori.

Yamadoris are found in the most inhospitable places, thriving under the most adverse conditions. The most sought out specimens are collected high up in the mountain, in rocky places with little or no soil, clinging on crevices, exposed in high winds. Their growth was hampered by lack of ample rain and deprived of basic nutrients the plants need for sustenance and proper development.

The forces of nature and the elements conniving with ravenous inhabitants of the land relentlessly harass the plant. These constant atrocities hardens the plant giving the tree it's stunted look, contorted shape, and subdued appearance. It is what enthusiasts are intently looking, for perfect prospects.

The world is conditioned to look for what it thinks as beautiful, ideal, exemplary in well-adjusted places and shunned the contrary. Its eyes were not trained to search for yamadori nor sensitive to its plight. The slow and substandard were scorned, looked down, and marginalized by societies status quo.

Yet Jesus sought the yamadori in shattered alabaster, at the well of Samaria, the pool of Bethesda, on top of a Sycamore tree, in the ostracized village of leper colony, in beggar's land robbed of their sight at birth, and in the most down and out of the society.

The Lord is not only looking for the yamadori in these deplorable and lonely places and saw their obscured beauty. He was drawn to them and transformed them from their brokenness !

by NeiL ArandA

Author's Note

In loving memory of Keith Lane and his friendship