What I've learned from my dogs ....

Today is exactly 2 weeks since I closed on my new home. It's hard to believe it's been only 2 weeks. We are settling into our new home and loving it. I think the dogs must feel like they are in heaven now with this awesome big back yard to run around in. I love our new home. It has been so healing for me to have a space of my own and to allow myself to simply create and let evolve what is meant to be ... yes, health issues still loom over my head but that's okay. I feel great. I step into the next stage of my life's journey with both feet and have embraced the joy and possibilities of what is to come along with the tears and the sadness of what has been and what has been lost. I am learning though that nothing, nothing is ever really lost. Everything evolves. Everything changes. And if we remain open to it, we too can transform.

I'm sure there are many of you that can relate to the healing power of animals. My dogs Ahnung, Missy and Mister have been my best medicine through all that has happened. Finally having a home where we could all be together again has brought me so much joy. I believe and hope that it has brought them just as much joy.

I thought i'd share with you just a few things I have learned from my amazing furkids this past week as we have stepped into our new beginning ...

What I have learned from my Dogs

~ Marilou Chanrasmi

Break the Rules ....

Live in the Moment

Lean on my friends ... we don't have to go through the tough times alone.

Slow down. Take time to meditate and reflect.

Live as if there is no tomorrow. Give everything you have into what you love

and what makes you happy.

Love has no boundaries.

Take time to play. Be a kid again. Don't take life too seriously.

Open up my heart to the unconditional love ... be willing to both

give and receive.

And take time for rest ... LOTS of it!!!!

With that Moon Language

I love that my last name means moon rays ... I love the moon, and the stars and the sun. I love to imagine what's out there when i look up into the skies. It's simply too magnificent, too miraculous, too perfect for our universe to not be the creation of some being or force greater than our comprehension ... for me, that being is God.

My mom left me a message on my phone last night after I had gone to bed. I'm walking a path - new to me yet familiar to so many who have walked this path before me -- the frightening path of alzheimers. As I get ready to return my mom's call this morning I remind myself that she is scared, confused and as Hafiz so eloquently professes in his poem ... is simply saying "Love me."

With that Moon Language

Admit Something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me,"

Of course you do not do this out loud; otherwise,

someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us

to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a full moon

in each eye that is always saying,

with that sweet moon langugage,

what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

How to Know What you Need to Know

I ran across this beautiful poem and had to share. I was reminded today of how important my meditation practice has been for me over the past 15 years ... my morning time is what kept me grounded all these years. Every morning ... I breathe, I acknowledge my thoughts (and often they come in massive flurries!) and I let it go ... over and over again ...

May we have happiness and joy in simplicity.
May we find contentment and peace in what is.
May we love, simply and truly love, no expectations ... no strings attached ... simply,

just because.

Thank you Sandra for so eloquently writing a poem that reminds me ... that in the stillness, in the simplicity, in the now ... I will know what I need to know.

How To Know What You Need To Know
- by Sandra Turner

First, forget everything you have learned,
that the American Dream is a worthy cause,
that you need a couch and a dishwasher,
another opinion, pair of jeans, or
that complicated relationship.

Go alone to an empty, quiet place and stay
there until you don’t want to leave. Take a deep
breath and feel it swirl up your spine, wash your
mind and descend. Notice the ecstatic jitterbug going
on between your cells and then ask who you really are,

beyond appearance and accomplishment, thought and
feeling, history and hope. You know you’re there,
under all that you’ve learned as disguise, to
protect and adapt. To survive.
You are there.

Let go of fear and need. What matters will remain.
You don’t have to analyze or predict, and nobody’s
buying explanations anyway. Turn off the news, mongers of
artificial importance, of deep insecurity. Whose reality are
they reporting, anyway? Turn off the blathering
shows and tunes, and begin your own walk.

Notice your muscles stretch and sigh in relief, your organs
find their rightful places. Feel the excitement of your blood as
it tag-teams through the intricacy of your vessels.
Hear the music of the wind as it blows right through
the semblance of your solidity.

And feel how bits of you leave with that wind, carried off
like tiny mice to hawks, nourishment for another.
Let this go — it happens without your consent — and notice instead
what rushes in to replace the loss, and that
the loss was necessary for the new to arrive.

When you no longer know your name or what your kitchen looks like,
when the other lives you see are glowing orbs floating toward you,
and you feel a pull toward them, as to a beloved,
such intense joy you could explode into the billions of atoms you are,
you will know what you need to know. Remember your name and
close this manual.

Sandra Turner, 11/2009
(The first and last lines from Pamela Spiro Wagner’s “How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s Manual”.)

©2009 Sandra Turner

Are you listening?

I was going through old journals this morning, trying to make sense of a recurring dream ... in the process, I stumbled across something I wrote in March, 2006. With my last entry being on "Listen to the Whispers", I thought I would share what I wrote.

Are you Listening?

When the voice of God whispers to you,
are you listening?
Or are you waiting for Moses to lead you across the Red Sea?

God whispers to you, every day.
In the kind stranger who gives up his seat,
in the sore throat that whispers "slow down",
in Douja, the abandoned pitbull tied to a tree in St. Paul, left to freeze.

The question, dear friend, is ... are you listening?
Or is the music from your ipod blaring so loud
and your cell phone ringing to fill the quiet spaces
that God's whispers are drowned out --
background noise.
Noise to filter out. To keep at a safe distance.

What happens if you listen?

The whispers will call out to your from everywhere.
They will lift your spirits,
but they can also pierce your soul.
Whispers ignored will turn to cries,
and cries to pleas of desperation.

"Stop the bleeding!"

Fill your heart with the whispers
and help stop the bleeding;
help stop our oceans from turning crimson red.

There is no need to wait.
We are all Moses.
The gift of miracles is within us all. We can all part the Red Sea.
God is in us.

Hear the cries of the innocent.
And let the fire that burns inside of you ...
... be the voice of the whispers.


- Marilou Chanrasmi (3/27/2006)

I had a dream about God last night. This dream spans across years (and is the reason I found myself reading through old journals this morning). In my dream I was aching for God to appear in my dreams again. And a woman says to me, "He is always in your heart. He is always with you."