Commencement 2003

Kari Hart: A child of the seminary
soon to graduate with honors

Kari Hart

PHILADELPHIA, PA (May 13, 2003) -- Kari Hart grew up on the LTSP campus where her father, Dr. Clarence Lee, taught Reformation and Early Christian History for more than 30 years. She never gave much thought, though, to following in his footsteps. "We had a good laugh about it once in a while," she recalls, "but I had no interest in his work."

Were Clarence Lee alive today, May 18, 2003 would probably be one of his proudest days. During LTSP’s 139^th commencement exercises, Kari Hart, who like her Dad holds a Phi Beta Kappa key, will receive her M.Div degree with honors from LTSP. She awaits a call in Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod to serve as a parish pastor, where she will explore her love of teaching and preaching.

Kari Hart’s journey through seminary began in the fall of 1957 when she was just a 1-year-old. That’s when her Dad began his LTSP teaching career. She describes growing up on the Mt. Airy campus as an "idyllic experience" with her Mother, Kathy, Dad, two younger sisters, Elizabeth and Martha, and the children of other faculty members who included a dozen or so friends with last names like Reumann, Aden, Bornemann and Krodel. Interests, she recalls, included "softball and fighting."

She earned her Phi Beta Kappa distinction at Oberlin College in Ohio, graduating in 1978 and majoring in American History, which attracted her father’s good-natured scoffing. "He would say America hasn’t been around long enough to have much of a history," she chuckles. She had a fleeting interest in politics and became disillusioned after working in a Michigan congressional campaign. She began her post-college career waiting tables at a bar/restaurant called The Class Reunion in Washington, D.C. There, she came to know journalists like Sam Donaldson. From 1979 to 1983 she managed two restaurants and a clothing store, and "discovered how to handle the challenges of ministry" for the first time while working in retail. In 1984, Kari found her way back home to Philadelphia where she worked as the "dessert girl" for restaurateur Georges Perrier at the renowned Le Bec Fin Restaurant. She also became one of the few women to wait tables at the high-profile restaurant. "I made good money and enjoyed the prestige," she says.

Marriage to husband, Shawn, followed, along with two daughters, Katie, now nearly 17, and Amanda, 15. She lived in West Mt. Airy, still her current home. Soon came "the journey through hell" which marked her Dad’s final illness. Her father experienced severe pain initially thought to be pancreatitis, but which turned out to be pancreatic and liver cancer. "It was a difficult time," she recalls. "I was very angry." She describes her Dad, a beloved teacher at the seminary as "reserved in his emotions. But we knew how much he loved us. We were an intensely close family." She adds that she has enjoyed hearing from her father’s former students over the years "about how they loved him. They have told her, she says, "that he was kind and always took an interest in them. He had a quiet sense of humor, and they say he was accessible. They have told me of how they recall certain lectures that he gave. I have found their letters so moving."

She describes being at her Dad’s bedside at the end as "a baptismal wakeup call. I have not figured out how to describe it in words. I experienced the theology of the cross with God’s presence at the bottom-most point in my life. God was present with my father. I could see that. And God was present with me in my father’s absence." She compares the experience with what she knows of Martin Luther’s writings "of the presence of God" in the midst of "bottom-most pain." She was also strengthened considerably during that difficult time by the consoling ministry of the late Rev. Vivian Roberts, then the pastor of Ascension Lutheran Church. "I was inspired by her steadfastness" and visits she tirelessly made to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital to reassure the family, Kari recalls.

During the ensuing years she focused on her family and picked up free-lance jobs as a copy editor, proof reader and fitness instructor while she attended to growing children She volunteered at the Houston School in her neighborhood and became president of Houston’s Home and School Association When she had a chance she also "studied the Word in the Bible seriously," and found that the experience "turned my life around spiritually." She began teaching Sunday school at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Philadelphia’s Germantown and found herself admiring St. Michael’s pastors, the Rev. Janet Peterman and the Rev. Violet Little.

Now Kari Hart found her faith journey rapidly becoming "an itch that I couldn’t quite scratch," she says. "I was having a profound sense of personal experience that God wanted me to share. But I didn’t know how, what or why. She spent a day in 1996 in the office of then Dean James K. Echols "crying my eyes out." His response was simply to suggest taking one course at seminary. She studied Corinthian Correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Robin Mattison. "I got hooked on it," Hart recalls. "It just turned my world upside down." That was in 1997. Mattison recalls that she thought right away of Hart as a "remarkable student. She was writing Ph.D. level papers right from the start." Still focusing primarily on her family, Hart began taking course one or two at a time, gradually increasing her study load and accomplishing her internship work at Holy Communion Lutheran Church, Philadelphia. Connecting herself with the questions, concerns and interests of other seminarians helped her deal with the paradoxical questions of her life about expressing and sharing her faith through ministry. "It was a great relief to me to learn that others around me were experiencing the same sort of call," she says.

"When you finally understand how God is embracing your life in faith, you can begin to look back and see where God has been working with you daily to open your eyes," she says. "I feel now I have been invited to see how God has been working in every aspect of my life." She says she enjoys sharing now how profoundly God has been inviting her to this place in her life. And she issues the invitation to others now too. "It’s really not about me at all, but about God," Hart says, and she adds that part of the learning experience of God’s invitation is discovering how to allow "my fingers to be pryed away when I want to control things," she says. "I can be invited to let go and just know the freedom of having God with me in a whole process."

The support from husband Shawn, a financial planning consultant, and children has been remarkable, she adds. "I appreciate their honesty. They have been good at telling me when I am getting too worried."