Happy 2008

We wish you a year of challenge, risk and joy.

Peace

theRubicon team

Bon mots

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ttentive readers of theRubicon will hopefully note that it has been a rather long time since we changed the selection of quotations, bon mots and observations that appear in the left-hand sidebar of the main page. At present we have 24 pithy, profound (and admittedly, sometimes pointless) observations that currently rotate through Random Quotes. While our present stock of musings are undoubtedly potent, frequent exposure has muted them somewhat and so, in our unending quest to be relevant and helpful (to each of you)…and cool, we’re asking for your help.

We need a new selection of quotes to mix it up a bit and expand our present canon. We’re throwing it out to you. Please take a moment to dig out your notebooks, ransack your personal library or craft a sophisticated search string on Google (please go easy on the Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde and William Booth quotes… there is no way this triumvirate lived long enough to have said all the things attributed to them) and send us your favourite quotes.

While we reserve the right to include/exclude submissions, we are casting a wide net here. We like quotes that inspire but don’t sound
like they were crafted by Hallmark. We like quotations that reveal insights often hidden, or bon mots by Salvation Army figures (or
about Salvation Army figures). And as always, short is better than long.

Send us a few or a lot; ensure they are correctly attributed and help us refresh our store of stale wisdom.

theRubicon team

Update

A quick note of thanks and an apology.

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or the past month Capt. Rick Zelinsky (aka Vox populi) has handled the posting duties for theRubicon while our usual editor and poster - Bramwell Ryan - was overseas. Rick did a wonderful job stepping into the sometimes arcane world of maintaining a WordPress site. Thanks. Appreciation also to Sharon Jones-Ryan for handling the comment moderation while Bram was away.

Now for the mea culpa - we dropped the ball this week in the hand-over from Rick back to Bram and missed some posts - sorry! Stay with us… more news, commentary and discussion lies ahead.

theRubicon editorial team

due to technical…

Midlife crisis, momentary lapse of sanity, chemical imbalance…You pick the excuse why we missed yesterday’s post. I’m suggesting we’re having Bram withdrawal. Or, we may be lacking a sense of duty. It won’t happen again. Missing the post that is. As for the other excuses? They’re still on the radar.

Crossing the rubicon…

… into the blogosphere

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omeone once conjectured that if every bon mot, aphorism, witticism and word of wisdom attributed to Winston Churchill had actually been said by Winston Churchill, then he would have needed to live at least twice as long as he did and spoken non-stop for most of his waking hours. Something similar can be said of William and Catherine Booth, the founders of The Salvation Army. In Salvationist circles they tend to be quoted extensively (at times in support of some rather dodgy practices, it needs to be said) with some of their more well-known sayings accorded almost the same reverence as Scripture. Almost. There is little doubt that much of what they are purported to have said is apocryphal. However, one quite famous assertion that can be verified as having issued from the very lips of Catherine was: “It is necessary to disturb the present in order to improve the future.”

› Continue reading

Summer schedule @ theRubicon

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or the months of July and August we will be switching to a twice-weekly posting of theRubicon (Tuesday & Friday), instead of our usual thrice-weekly offering. The summer schedule will still include a mixture of print pieces and podcasts (Areopagus).

As well, we are undertaking some further reconfigurations of the site over the next couple of months and hope to unveil a new and improved Rubicon in early September - as we make these “upgrades”, we will keep you all informed. We may even be approaching some of you for assistance and input.

Please keep sending in material if you have something you think would be a good fit for us - we are always in need of a constant supply of fresh material.

Finally, please take another look at our ridiculously reasonable advertising rates which are posted on the site. Each successive upgrade and improvement of theRubicon requires a certain amount of financial investment so, if you regularly access theRubicon and find it helpful and interesting, please think about either taking out an ad or just sending us a donation. We’re not proud - we’ll take anything you feel you can give. We cannot provide tax receipts however, so if you do decide that you can help us out, then it will be pure altrusim on your part (not allowing the left-hand of the tax man know what the right-hand of your generosity is up to, to very-roughly-paraphrase Jesus).

Thanks for your support.

theRubicon team

Happy 1st Birthday Rubicon!

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

by Geoff Ryan

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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. › Continue reading

Strange sounds are back

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or all who wrote about the non-functioning iTunes Areopagus site we have good news. The technical issues are resolved and you can now listen to all 11 Areopagus episodes (with more to come) on iTunes, you can download for listening in your computer or on your ipod. You can also burn CDs of all the presentations. Sorry it took so long to get this fixed. Click here to load the Areopagus page in the podcast section of iTunes (you will need iTunes installed in your computer, which is a free download).

Note: this is a completely new podcast landing page on iTunes so please follow the link here or the updated link in the Areopagus section (top of the website) and delete all old Areopagus files in your iTunes.

The View From Here

Give-up playing church: Greg Paul

It wasn’t even a full moon – I checked.

We had an ‘incident’, or maybe two or three, at a drop-in the other night. The room had been very full when supper was served: every seat occupied, the couches and the floor in front of the fireplace full of sprawling people, late-comers lining the walls and watching hungrily for seats to come empty.

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Crossing another stream

The relaunch

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elcome to the redesigned Rubicon. To revisit the founding parable of this online journal, today we’ve splashed into another river and there’s no way back. The upstream dam that blocked and delayed the relaunch is now open and we are proud to present this complete overhaul.

Here are the highlights: › Continue reading