Adrian Lyons, the founding editor of Eureka Street in 1991, died last week in Melbourne at the age of 70.
In the first edition of Eureka Street the editors promised that the magazine would attend to 'the questions behind the questions'. They also hoped it would reveal 'Christianity's continuing vigour and the resources of wisdom it makes available to anyone making important decisions, public or private', adding that 'issues that present as primarily religious or churchly always turn out to have counterparts elsewhere'.
Those thoughts represent Adrian Lyons' abiding interests. He was always concerned to go beneath the surface when reflecting on personal and public issues, and particularly to attend to the unnoticed connections between culture and Christian faith, and the surprising places where they come together in public life.
Adrian's interests came out of a naturally reflective temperament honed by his years as a university chaplain from the late 1970s. His work involved much listening to students as they tried to make sense of their own lives and of the wider world they were entering.
It also drew him, an apolitical man, into the world of student politics both in the university and among Catholic societies at a time when the claims of change and of stability were keenly fought over.
Good university chaplains always have a gift for attending to the quiet voices that speak from unexpected places, to what is communicated behind the words, and to places in culture that are open to faith. Adrian was very good. He was a good listener with a ceremonious gentleness of address, did not impose his views, and created the space in conversation that encouraged reflection.
His university experience taught him the importance of a non-adversarial Catholic presence in the public square. When the existing Jesuit magazines were brought together in the late 1980s to form Jesuit Publications he was involved in the move to begin a magazine for a public audience. He spent some time in the United States working on the well-staffed America magazine with a view to beginning an Australian magazine.
On his return to Australia he deepened his understanding of the place of faith in contemporary secular culture. He formed part of a team of Jesuits who explored the connections between belief and unbelief in Australia.
Adrian wrote the report of the project. It was characteristically fragmentary in style, reflecting his close attention to the particularity of experience