FINDING GOD IN POETRY

 

Another sister, close to the heart of other famous writers was, SISTER MAURA EICHNER.  Born in 1915, she grew up in New York City where she was educated by the School Sisters of Notre Dame.  At the age of 18 she joined the order.  She hoped to dedicate her life to teaching young children, preferably the poor, but the Lord had other plans for her.

From 1943 to 1993 she taught in the English department of Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore  and would become Chair of the English Department.  After her death the many tributes to Sister Maura showed her to be a beloved teacher, as well as a talented poet.

The first of the ten poetry collections she published in her lifetime, “Initiate the Heart,”  appeared in 1946.  In 1989 “Hope Is A Blind Bard”  and “After Silence: Selected Poems of Sister Maura Eichner S.S.N.D.”  in 2011.  

 Over the years she won several teaching awards, both local and national, including the prestigious Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for outstanding contributions to Catholic higher education. In her poem ''A Short History of the Teaching Profession," written perhaps for one of her own teachers, she says: ''All those words that fountained/from her have gathered into streams/that fountain other streams forever." 

In 21 years of Atlantic magazine student writing contests, Notre Dame students, inspired by Maura, won an astonishing 297 awards, including nine first-place awards. 

Sister Maura Eichner once said in a New York Times interview, that a poet needs to write "with the humility of a craftsman and the ardor of a saint" and to be "flaming with the good tidings of the Incarnation."

Through the years she maintained a correspondence with other famous writers, including, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Richard Wilbur. 

Flannery’s 1963 letter to Sister Maura thanks her for the poetry she sent and asks for prayers for her March 25th birthday. The final letter to Sister Maura, dated March 25, 1964, sends thanks for another poem and wishes Sister Maura a blessed Easter as she (Flannery)  recovers from a recent surgery.

Sister Maura died in 2009. Sister  Mary Ellen Dougherty, a member of her order sums up Sister Maura:  As a teacher and as a poet, Sister Maura was a believer. She believed in beauty - in art, in nature, in music, in painting, in language. Sister Maura believed in life, and she believed in people. Above all, she believed simply and deeply in a God who believed in beauty, and in life, and in people. In one of her later notebooks, Sister Maura wrote "One writes poetry in order to find God." One may well read Sister Maura's poetry for the same reason."

Consider the season's wheel:
the turn of summer creeping over
leaves one incurved tendril on the vine,
one pointed peak of sweet late clover.

Initiate the heart to change
for it is wiser so,
accepting the splendor of the hour
white with clematis or snow.

Fortify the will with peace;
no season taking root,
tranquil in mist, in warmth, in frost,
each bears fruit.