The Rev. Kathleen Hawkins Berkowe

Mother Kathleen’s call to seminary came in the middle of a career as a corporate and real estate attorney in New York City. 

“How did you go from the law to seminary? is a question I’m often asked,” she told parishoners at a recent Family Grille Night. “The answer is the story of my spiritual journey.” Mother Kathleen likes to point out that all of us have a spiritual journey, a relationship with God. She likes to help people pay attention to their relationship with God. At the recent adult education, she offered participants questions and vocabulary that prompted their thinking about their spiritual journeys.     

Raised in the Church, and confirmed on a military base in Germany, Mother Kathleen had a sense of God’s presence as a constant throughout her childhood as her family moved frequently in the U.S. and Europe. At the National Cathedral School for Girls in Washington, D.C., she studied Church History and Church Music, and fell in love with the Daily Office and Liturgy. In Latin class she read Cicero, who, together with Thurgood Marshall and the great civil rights lawyers, were her role models for choosing a career in law. Mother Kathleen was an active layperson, at times serving on vestry, directing church school, and starting adult and youth education programs.

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During seminary, Mother Kathleen organized the speaker series, Identity, Community and the World with inaugural speaker, The Rev. Canon Harold Lewis. In 2009, she received a grant from the Seminary Commission on Mission to work for the summer with children in the Episcopal School in Blantyre, Malawi, Southern Africa. She was ordained transitional Deacon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in the Diocese of New York on March 13, 2010.