Our Story

Some dreams begin as plans.

Ours began as a longing.

Long before there was land, a nonprofit, a logo, or even a name for what we were creating, there was a feeling.

A longing for a different way of living.

A longing for a life that moved a little more slowly. One with dirt beneath our feet and stars overhead. One where food could come from the garden, animals were part of the family, neighbors knew one another, and there was enough quiet to hear the voice of God beneath the noise of the world.

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For many years, my wife and I lived a very different life.

I spent sixteen years in the corporate world, fourteen of them in middle management. I learned how to lead people, build teams, solve problems, manage impossible days, and keep moving when everything seemed to be on fire.

And I am grateful for those years.

But somewhere along the way, we began looking at the world around us—and at the life we were building within it—and asking a different question:

What if we didn't have to live this way?

What if our lives could actually reflect what we believed mattered?

What if we could slow down?

What if we could return to the land?

What if we could create a life rooted in family, spirituality, community, service, animals, growing food, making things with our hands, and remembering that human beings belong to the Earth—not somewhere above or apart from it?

And then another question began quietly growing beside those:

What if we could create a place where other people could experience that too?

That question became a seed.

And seeds, given enough love and stubbornness, have a funny way of becoming things.

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Then came the land.

Eventually, our little family found its way to forty acres in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

There are fields here.

Woods.

Old barns.

Animals.

Snow that sometimes seems determined to swallow the entire world.

And a farmhouse that has already lived more life than any of us.

It wasn't a polished retreat center waiting for someone to put a sign at the driveway.

Far from it.

It was land with history and work to be done.

But we could see something.

We could see gardens.

We could see people walking through the trees.

We could see little places tucked along the edge of the woods where someone might wake in the morning, step outside with a cup of tea, and hear nothing but birds.

We could imagine people gathering around a fire.

Practicing yoga beneath an open sky.

Sitting together in meditation.

Sharing food around a long table.

Laughing.

Crying.

Learning.

Resting.

Praying.

Getting their hands dirty.

Remembering what it feels like to belong to something larger than themselves.

We could see a place that wasn't asking anyone to become someone new.

Only offering enough space and stillness to remember who they already are.

And slowly, The Joyful Shelter began revealing itself.

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And then there was Ma.

At the center of my own life is Shri Anandamayi Ma.

Her life and teachings have profoundly shaped the way I understand God, devotion, service, and the sacredness woven through ordinary life.

And yet, one of the things I love most about Ma is that the Divine was never something small enough to be contained inside a single box.

God is not the property of one religion.

The Sacred does not speak only one language.

There are countless doors.

Prayer can be a door.

Meditation can be a door.

Jesus can be a door.

Krishna can be a door.

Allah can be a door.

Silence can be a door.

A garden can be a door.

A song can be a door.

A goat nudging your hand while you're trying very seriously to practice yoga can apparently be a door too.

The sacred is everywhere when we learn how to notice it.

And that understanding became the heartbeat of The Joyful Shelter.

We are deeply rooted in the life and teachings of Anandamayi Ma, but we are not building a place where everyone must believe the same thing.

Quite the opposite.

We dream of creating a place where people from many traditions—and people who aren't quite sure what they believe yet—can come closer to whatever awakens that sacred thread within them.

Closer to the land.

Closer to one another.

Closer to themselves.

Closer to God.

Even the name had been waiting for us.

My name is Ramani Sharana comes from the ancient Sanskrit language.

Its meaning was given to me as Joyful Shelter.

For years, that was simply my spiritual name.

Eventually, I began to understand it differently.

Perhaps a name can also be an invitation.

Perhaps Joyful Shelter wasn't only something I had been called.

Perhaps it was something I was being asked to help create.

Not a shelter from life.

A shelter within life.

A place where we can come exactly as we are—tired, curious, joyful, grieving, questioning, devoted, uncertain, hopeful—and be held long enough to hear ourselves again.

And perhaps, somewhere in that quiet, to hear God too.

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So what are we building?

Right now?

We're building the beginning.

TJS has two parts to it.

One is an LLC which currently houses things like, yoga classses, sacred events, workshops and nourishing gatherings. In 2027, it will also support farmers markets in nearby Marquette, MI as well as a farm stand on the property where you can buy home made-clean ingredient products produced by our animals, Ramani and our expert self taught chief Danny.

AND…..

Secondly it is a Non-Profit organisaion that has a much bigger dream. We hope to use our property to host retreats, spiritual gatherings, healing spaces and be able to provide monthly donations to our sister ashram,Ma Sharanam Ashram in India run by Ramanis teacher Swami Gurusharananda and his family.

At this moment…

There are goats and chickens to care for. Gardens to grow. Buildings to repair. Infrastructure to create. Retreat spaces to dream into existence. There are plans scratched onto paper, conversations happening around our kitchen table, grant applications being written, classes being taught, and an extraordinary amount we are still figuring out as we go.

We are early.

Beautifully, wildly, sometimes terrifyingly early.

But the dream is big.

We envision The Joyful Shelter growing into a regenerative retreat center, nonprofit ashram, homestead, and spiritual refuge.

We dream of simple retreat accommodations tucked near the trees.

A space for yoga, meditation, sound, prayer, satsang, study, and gathering.

Gardens that nourish the people who come here.

Animals that remind us how to be present.

Shared meals.

Dancing under the moonlight

Drum circles

Tea and Cacao Ceremonies

Sacred fires.

Trails through the woods.

Places to sit alone.

Places to gather together.

Retreats and teachings.

Yoga Nidra beneath warm blankets.

Goat Yoga

Sound bowls ringing into silence.

People learning to grow things.

People learning to rest.

People discovering spiritual practices that make their lives feel alive again.

And perhaps most importantly, room for this place to become things we haven't imagined yet.

Because we don't want to build something so rigid that there is no room left for God to surprise us.

This is not an escape from the world.

We want The Joyful Shelter to help us fall more deeply in love with it.

With this Earth.

With one another.

With the strange, messy privilege of being alive.

With the possibility that washing a dish can be sacred.

That tending an animal can be prayer.

That planting a seed is an act of faith.

That rest is not something we have to earn.

That people with different names for God can still sit beside one another.

That spirituality doesn't have to remove us from ordinary life.

It can return us to it.

Maybe a little softer.

Maybe a little braver.

Maybe a little more awake.

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And this is only the beginning.

Someday, someone may arrive here who has no idea how much of this once existed only in our imagination.

They may walk down a trail beneath trees that haven't yet been cleared.

Sleep in a retreat space that today is still a sketch.

Eat food from a garden we haven't planted.

Sit around a fire ring that hasn't been built.

Practice in a sacred space that, right now, exists only in our hearts.

I love thinking about that person.

Because we are building this place for them.

And for the person who needs silence.

The person who needs community.

The person who needs dirt beneath their feet.

The person who has spent years believing they aren't spiritual enough.

The person who loves God deeply.

The person who isn't sure God exists.

The person who needs to laugh.

The person who needs to grieve.

The person who simply needs somewhere to exhale.

We don't know everyone who will eventually find their way here.

But somehow, we are already making room for them.

That is the magic of this beginning.

We are building something for people we haven't met yet.

And trusting that, when the time is right, they will find their way home.

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This is The Joyful Shelter.

Not finished.

Not perfect.

Still becoming.

A little farm in the Upper Peninsula.

A very big dream.

An offering to God.

And, we hope, one day...

a place to return home.

Jai Ma.

P.S You can find classes with The Joyful Shelter currently housed at BeWell in Marquette Michigan