Poetry as Spiritual Practice: An Evening of Contemplation and Verse
Long before poetry was literature, it was prayer. The Psalms, the ghazals of Rumi and Hafiz, the bhakti songs of Mirabai, the Zen poet's last breath on the page: across traditions, the poem has carried what ordinary speech cannot, a way of paying attention, of metabolizing grief and wonder, of communicating the soul's deepest longing, of saying the unsayable to whatever we hold sacred.
In Zen, a student's verse could reveal the depth of their awakening: teachers asked their disciples to set down a few lines—sometimes brushed on a monastery wall—so they could see, in the shape of the words, how far the dharma had taken root. Mystics like St. John of the Cross wrote their poems first, in darkness and in prison, setting down the theology only afterward. For them, the poem was not ornament but the very container for meeting the Divine.
We gather in that long lineage, and our guides stand within it. Sacred poet Noah Schnaubelt joins Nelson González—whose own Zen path runs through the poet and priest Norman Fischer, for whom writing itself is a contemplative practice—to open poetry not as a craft to perfect but as a practice to keep.
We'll move in two breaths. First, receiving: reading a handful of poems slowly, the way one might pray a text, listening for what lands in the body rather than what we're "supposed" to understand. Then, offering: writing from that same opened place. Not to perform or to polish, but, as in the old verse traditions, to let what is true in us quietly show itself. You'll leave with a simple, repeatable practice you can carry into your own mornings, a way to let language become a path inward, toward the sacred.
No writing experience is needed. Whatever you arrive carrying, whether tenderness, restlessness, a roar you haven't yet found words for, is exactly enough to begin.
Your guides
Noah Schnaubelt is a San Francisco–based sacred poet and spoken-word artist, creator of The Roar and the Tender and author of the poetry collection A Life of Prayer & Song. His work lives at the meeting place of psyche and soul, crafting bridges that help us turn pain into beauty.
Nelson González is the founder of The Crossings Collective, and a senior Soto Zen practitioner whose lineage runs through Peter Van Der Sterre and Norman Fischer, who has also been formed by contemplative Christian practice, Bhakti yoga, and his ancestral Colombian traditions.
About The Crossings Collective
The Crossings Collective is a not-for-profit committed to creating islands of coherent belonging, translating the ancient wisdom of world spiritual traditions into practices that are accessible, relevant, and trauma-informed for communities on the margins.
We focus on:
Supporting Wounded Healers: practitioners metabolizing their own suffering into the capacity to serve others, through sustained engagement with wisdom lineage practices
Developing "Healing Journey Cartographers": senior practitioners able to sequence, titrate, and integrate contemplative practices in a trauma-informed way
Curating Initiatory Experiences: land-based ceremonies with Two Spirit and Indigenous elders, held with rigor and respect
Current offerings include:
Bi-weekly workshops on specific spiritual practices (Heart Lab, San Francisco, every other Wednesday)
A four-month community of care for those developing a personal vow or rule of life as a wounded healer path
Initiation experiences: medicine wheel sweat lodges, supervised solo wilderness vision quests, and guided integration (Carmel Valley and Olema, Fall 2026)
Sacred land pilgrimages to Tassajara, Green Gulch, Olema, Big Sur, Point Reyes, New Mexico, and Colombia