There is a story of an opera house in a small Italian town, where even the most humble of citizens take their opera extremely seriously. A very third-rate tenor struggled his way through the role of Rudolfo in La Boheme and was astonished to be applauded vigorously. He obliged with an encore, and was again greeted with thunderous applause. He encored the solo three more times, to the same loud reception, and then walked to the front of the stage and said:

"My thanks for your generous, generous reception, but I cannot do the piece again." And a voice from the back of the theater called out:

"You'll do it till you get it right!"

There are three ways to work Steps 10, 11 and 12. There's the tentative approach, where our commitment is weak and where we fall away often, returning to the safety of Steps 4 thru 9. Then there's the way that the tenor was encouraged to try -- to work at Steps 10, 11 and 12 until we get them right. But -- unlike the singing of an opera solo -- there is no "getting them right." To work those Steps for a particular reason or purpose, to see them as an exercise which is to be repeated until it's flawless, is to ignore the nature of the last three Steps. They are there simply to be done -- well, poorly, willingly, lazily, it simply doesn't matter. Each day we repeat the performance, and each day God as we understand God uses our practice to make us a little more what s/he wants us to be.