Happy 1st Birthday Rubicon!

Calling all poets, playwrights, artists, humorists, theologians, philosophers and weavers

by Geoff Ryan

T

heRubicon is a year old. It’s been an interesting year for those of us who started this online magazine. The first team was John McAlister and myself, both of us based in Toronto, Canada. Then John, along with his wife Rochelle, moved to Africa and that made his regular involvement with theRubicon something of a challenge. Andrea Demchuk (Toronto) jumped in to help out with the posting and did a yeoman job of keeping the boat afloat during that uncertain period following John’s departure.

Things changed in Andrea’s life, and she needed to take a break from theRubicon, at which point my big brother Bram (all preachers use alliteration) stepped up, eventually re-designing the site, adding Areopagus and taking over as managing editor (all from his perch in Winnipeg, Canada). This has allowed me to move into the exalted role of “Publisher”. My father, Maxwell Ryan, also from Winnipeg, and Lesley Carter from Atlanta, Georgia have been fantastic in the vital - though often unnoticed and generally thankless - task of copy-editing each piece submitted for consideration to theRubicon. I am in debt to each of them.

Most important, however, is each of you - our readers and writers. Thank you for making theRubicon a regular part of your thought life. The cultural critic, Neil Postman, speaking on the overwhelming tide of information and words engulfing each of us in this new millenium, said that it has made L.I.A.R.S. of us all. For Postman, L.I.A.R. was an acronym for Low Information Action Ratio, and by this he meant that there is now so much information available for our consumption, that we end up paralyzed, unable to act on even a fraction of it, and hence the ratio of information that actually means anything in our lives is very small indeed. If this is true (and it would take a more foolish man than me to claim that Postman was wrong - even though he is dead) then the challenge for us is to be discriminating about the information that we choose to allow in each day. Further, it is about an intentional commitment to act on what knowledge we do assimilate - to be hearers and doers of the words we read. After all, faith without works is as dead as is wisdom without application. As the author Marva Dawn aptly phrased it, we are called to be “contemplative activists”.

And that, at the end of the day, is what theRubicon is intended to be about - to bring theology from the rarified and arcane heights of academia down into the muck and mire of our lives…to create a forum where the practitioners read and write and wrestle together as each of us works out our salvation with fear and trembling. The goal is an ever evolving “field theology” that is provocative, complicated at times, uncomfortable on occasion, but ultimately useful in making each of us better at what we do and at who we think we should be. A year later I believe we are off to a good start, thanks mostly to each one of you.

I’ll give the last words to Postman: “Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, we are awash in information without even a broom to help us get rid of it. Information comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume, at high speeds, severed from import and meaning. And there is no room to weave it all into a fabric. No transcendent narratives to provide us with moral guidance, social purpose, intellectual economy. No stories to tell us what we need to know, and what we do not need to know. This, then, in the problem we have to confront with as much intelligence and imagination as we can muster. We will need to consult our poets, playwrights, artists, humorists, theologians, and philosophers, who alone are capable of creating or restoring those metaphors and stories that give point to out labors, give meaning to our history, elucidate the present, and give direction to our future. They are our weavers, and I have no doubt that there are men and women among us who have the looms to weave us a fabric for our lives.”

Facts & Figures for theRubicon

Official launch April 1, 2006

Number of posts in 1st year: 118

Number of comments: 322

Date of redesign: Feb 21, 2007

Traffic increase since redesign: 294%/week

Thanks for spending a year with us on theRubicon. The best is yet to come…

4 Comments to Happy 1st Birthday Rubicon!

1. Congratulations theRubicon!

   I’ve enjoyed the first year and look forward to many more!
Graeme on April 2nd, 2007

2. The Rubicon is a daily stop for me as I procrastinate my way through each day. Problem is, that everything posted here makes me want to get up and do something!
Rob on April 2nd, 2007

3. Happy Birthday Rubicon!

   I love the very concept - crossing the line of no return, and have used the Rubicon illustration several times in my preaching and teaching in the past year.

   March on into another year of challenging, contradicting, confirming and conversing!

   Richard Munn
Richard Munn on April 3rd, 2007

4. Happy Birthday! What a year of dedication and hard work, editing and crafting. You have probably found yourself in front of your computer and keyboard more than you expected. Your site has been compelling and invigorating, structured carefully but not “careful”. Many of your articles and inclusions have been wracked with pointed statements, fully charged explosives for those who are willing to be encouraged - motivated to action in thinking, action in living, action in loving. “We are called to be contemplative activists” - you bring a very choice statement. We shape what we do, who we become, what we express by the impact of what we read and the ideas which work their ways through our thought process.
   I can only check your site about once a week, and I haven’t commented much at all, but I have felt your presence, your redemptive presence within this medium of the internet wave and have found the articles and authors you choose to have affected the sermons I have crafted, the reading list I have refined and the perspectives in which I see ministry within the will of God.
   Thank you for your dedication and creative flexability to include new revisions to a new medium…continue forward within the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the holy love of God through Christ Jesus our Redeemer.
Jessie Irwin on April 15th, 2007

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