of birds and ants and other small things

meditation for the day

All good work is done the way ants do things, little by little.
-Lafcadio Hearn
(thank you to Seema and Ajay, whose holiday card featured this lovely quote.)

and…
another one from Anne Lamott, a bit more contemporary:

”Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”