Dear friends,

 The Shalom Center is experiencing an important change in what has been our mostly internal process, and I want to take note of the valuable work that has characterized the nine-year tenure of Vivienne Hawkins, our Program Coordinator.  She is leaving to begin a new career as a life-coach with a strong spiritual orientation.

 She has been a mainstay of The Shalom Center during these nine years, a strong guarantor of the clarity and good sense of our finances and a yeoman worker under sometimes difficult circumstances in making possible our major events, like the Fiftieth-Anniversary Freedom Seder in April 2019.  I greatly admire how she has carried out both those crucial responsibilities.  May the spiritual work she is undertaking well meet her needs and the needs of our sorely wounded, distracted, and distorted world!

 We have made arrangements to undertake the Program Coordinator work with a team of hands-on outreach workers, the Justice Gardeners, who are closely connected to the Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis, and with a financial service called the Network for Strong Communities that specializes in service to non-profits.

 Shalom, salaam, paz, peace, namaste!  --  Arthur