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"To Life With the Spirit" is a poem by a Carmelite nun, Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit (1905-1988), who published under her baptismal name of Jessica Powers. Here is a summary of her biography from Marquette University:
Jessica Powers was born in Mauston, Wisconsin on February 7, 1905. After attending Marquette University’s College of Journalism (1922-1923), she worked as a secretary in Chicago before returning home to keep house for her younger brothers following the death of her mother in 1925. During this time Powers published over a hundred poems, many reflecting her background growing up in rural Wisconsin. She moved to New York in 1937, where she shared a home with the philosopher Anton Pegis and his wife Jessica, a writer, and helped care for their children. Powers grew intellectually and spiritually through her contacts with other writers who were part of the Catholic Revival, and her poems began to take on the contemplative, mystical quality characterizing her work in later years. Her first book, The Lantern Burns, appeared in 1939. Drawn to a cloistered religious vocation, Powers returned to Wisconsin in 1941 and entered the Carmel of the Mother of God, then located near Marquette University, receiving the religious name of Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit. The Carmelites moved to nearby Pewaukee in 1958. There Jessica Powers spent the remainder of her life, dying of a stroke on August 18, 1988.
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