A small town in the very north of the country is the movie setting for several murders -- the result of a man arranging the kidnapping of his own wife so that he can ransom her for money he badly needs. The hit men he employs are hoodlums with their own crazed agenda of violence, sex, and double-dealing. But even the man's "normal" family members are tainted by their own wants and desires.

Through this mayhem walk calmly the pregnant policewoman investigating the case and the other members of the small town. They are not surprised at what is happening around them: they participate in the events, to the extent that they impinge upon their lives or that their duty requires them to do so. But they remain strangely unaffected by the chaos created by these criminals. The policewoman is friendly and polite as she interviews the suspect who set the whole business in motion. She doesn't want to shoot the hoodlum who runs away from her as she attempts to arrest him, but she does so when he tries to evade arrest. Even the sight of the remains of the other hoodlum in a wood-chipping machine, while it gets her attention, doesn't seem to touch her.

What does touch her is her husband's failed attempt to have his art work appear on the twenty-five-cent stamp. As she lies, heavily pregnant, beside him in bed, she congratulates him on the adoption of his illustration for the three-cent stamp. Everyone needs a three-cent stamp, she reminds him, when the postage rates go up.

This is life as it is lived in Steps 10, 11 and 12. Our practice doesn't make the nastiness of much of the world disappear, or steer us away from misfortune. But it does enable us to walk through it, accepting it for what it is, secure in the inner strength that comes from our daily commitment to working the last three Steps.