The writer and singer of several definitive songs of the last century once wrote:

Everthing comes and goes
Marked by lovers
And styles of clothes ....
Just when you're thinking
You've finally got it made
Bad news comes knocking
At your garden gate.
Knocking for you, constant stranger ....

The world we encounter on the back of our Step 11 meditation practice is not a familiar world, but one which we have not seen before and which seems to become more baffling the more we work sincerely at the last three Steps. Those things which were a source of security -- our jobs, our families, our friends, even Program as we used to work it -- slip away from us; "everything comes and goes," and we find we are in a new place of which we know little and understand less, a place where we are constant strangers ....

But the word constant is ambiguous; it can also carry overtones of loyalty. When we are constant in our practice, we stay with our practice, no matter what we may have to give up. In the maelstrom of incessant change, of the disappearance of self or ego, and of the questioning of so-called reality, it's our dedication to our daily, meaningful practice of Steps 10, 11 and 12 which is the only source of constancy.