Contemporary spirituality is a lot about personal power: having the right attitude, affirming what you want, pasting the right picture on a vision map and, by golly, that picture is going to come to life for you because you’ve seen it and willed it and said, “And so it is.”

I’m totally on board with this stuff. In fact, I was raised with it. The wonderful woman my parents hired to live with us and take care of me when I was a baby (we were together until her death thirty years later) brought me up on Unity and Religious Science, with a smattering of Emerson and Alice Bailey. And it’s true: I’ve “manifested” just about everything I’ve ever really, really wanted. One of my vision maps had a 97% success rate — and there were big dreams on that piece of poster board, things like moving to New York City from the Midwest and getting on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Still, my basic default is powerlessness. A lot of people despise that word. I think it’s sweet. For me, it makes room for God.

Take right now, for instance. Our dog Aspen has lymphoma. She’s not young, but the doctor believes we can buy her another summer, and a doggy vacation to Farm Sanctuary in Upstate New York. I’m taking my turn with my daughter and son-in-law to get her to chemo and back in the Pet Taxi, and I’m pay my share of the oncologist’s bills. I also pray for her and envision her taking that trip when it gets warm. I’ve put her in Silent Unity where they pray for people (dogs are people) twenty-four hours a day, and they’ve been at it well over 100 years. Still, whether or not she’ll get that summer is completely out of my hands.

I have two books coming out on May 1st. It’s like having twins. I want them both — Living a Charmed Life and The Love-Powered Diet — to do really well, and I put the best I had into each one of them. I’m working with each publisher on polishing and fine points. I’m booking speaking gigs. But how much exposure they get, and how people will take to them, is beyond my control.

And just minutes ago, it seemed as if I had inadvertently murdered my husband’s printer. I’ve been putting together press packets all day (for scheduling the earlier alluded to speaking engagements), and I was using both my printer and his. I misplaced a one-page magazine article sometime in the mid-afternoon and didn’t think of it again until we realized that that slender, shiny page had been sandwiched inside a stack of copy paper, was macerated inside the printer, and apparently did in the mechanism. I sat to write this blog, realizing that I could use my skill with a butter-knife and tweezers (I’ve unjammed my paper-shredder that way lots of times) but whether or not the printer would have to go into the shop, or even whether or not it was broken beyond repair, would ultimately not be up to me.

As it turns out, William, my husband, triumphantly saved the printer. Aspen did well on chemo today and, my daughter told me, relished her dinner. The books are written and edited and I’m proud of them. Beyond this, whether in a matter as weighty as the life of someone I love or as flimsy as a sliver of paper in a plastic machine, is the mysterious. And that has to be okay.