Blessing of Unicorns: Helene, hope, Lewis and Tolkien get graphic, faith and higher education, and conferences

Every now and then, I have to re-tell the story of the name of this roundup for new readers, so here goes.

One fair Saturday a while back, I did a weekly roundup on this blog, and I called it a Unicorn—because it was filled with one-of-a-kind special reads, but also because I wasn’t sure I would do it again, or if it would be, well, a unicorn. But then I did another roundup the following week, which raised the question: is it still a unicorn? Then Current Contributing Editor Tim Larsen shared a unicorn worthy fact: just as many geese together form a gaggle, and sheep form a flock, and dolphins form a pod, so do many unicorns gathered together form a… blessing!

And so, here is another Blessing of Unicorns upon your day—reads that made me stop, reflect, weep, or rejoice this week.

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Up until July 2023, Dan and I lived in Georgia. We followed the news about Helene with alarm and concern for friends and loved ones in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. Thankfully, everyone we know is safe, and damage to property they have experienced has been relatively minor. But not everyone was so lucky. I recommend this powerful piece from Brad Littlejohn about the devastation Helene wreaked in North Carolina: “Entire Communities Gone: The wrath of Helene reveals the limits of human knowledge and power.” A taste:

Six months ago, I stood on Main Street in Chimney Rock, N.C., marveling at this postcard-perfect Southern Appalachian tourist town. Flanked by towering blue-green mountains, it nestled along a frothy whitewater stream where laughing children collected salamanders and sported a brewery, a barbecue joint, a magnificent ice cream shop, a gem store, and an array of little shops walking the fine line between kitschy and charming. It had become a favorite family haunt of ours, a place we’d try to get away to for a hike or invite friends to visit. Today, Chimney Rock is gone, wiped off the map—along with so many of the western Carolina towns and landscapes where I spent my childhood. As we watched the aerial footage of a valley choked with the fragments of upstream towns and shattered lives, my daughter wept silently beside me…

Perhaps more than any disaster in recent memory, Helene highlights the increasingly yawning gap between our technical knowledge-gathering prowess and our capacity to act upon it. Our tech titans tell us all we need is more data. Appalachia begs to differ.

From a forecasting standpoint, Helene was a marvel, one of the best-predicted storms in history. On Sept. 17, a week before the storm formed, the National Hurricane Center warned of possible development. On Sept. 23, forecasters correctly predicted a massive major hurricane would form, hit the Big Bend of Florida, and rapidly barrel into the southern Appalachians. By the time Helene was named the next day, the National Weather Service was already warning of “VERY heavy rainfall & gusty winds” in the western Carolinas, a forecast it steadily escalated, in deference to consistently catastrophic model data, till it was warning of the worst flooding in modern history, 36 hours in advance.

But that is all data. People do not think in data. People think in pictures, and it is hard to form a mental picture of what it is like to flee a crumbling mountainside along a winding road choked with fallen trees beside a raging torrent higher than you have ever seen it. “Extended power outages likely”—but it is hard to form a mental picture of being trapped with an ailing parent for days with no water, no electricity, no communication, and no way out because the roads no longer exist. Should we have really expected state troopers to forcibly relocate hundreds of thousands of people in advance of the storm?

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At such a time as this, we need hope that is true, and not just empty optimism. So argues Norman Wirzba so eloquently in his new book, Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis, out 10/29. You can read more of his reflections about it here, and you can look forward to his essay about it at Current at the end of the month as well.

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Gina Dalfonzo reviews John Hendrix’s graphic novel biography of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. A taste:

Throughout their lives and careers, Hendrix shows, both Tolkien and Lewis wrote in order to meet the needs of the moment—for escape from harsh realities, for more of the kinds of stories they loved, and just for expression of their beliefs, interests, and passions. It was their shared passion for myth that drew them together in the first place, and, while the friendship helped draw Lewis to the Christian faith—Tolkien served him as “a guide to get back home,” Hendrix writes—it also sparked new creativity in Tolkien.

“We write myths,” Tolkien tells Lewis, “because our hearts were written by a mythmaker.”

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Another needed reminder from Karen Swallow Prior in this interview with Evangelicals Now—that thinking of the presidential race as a “two-horse race between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump” is unnecessarily myopic.

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My favorite American historian wrote for The Raised Hand about this year’s question: What does every university and college student need to learn? You can look forward to more essays in response to this question over the rest of the school year, but in the meanwhile, here’s a taste from Dan’s answer, before you go read in full:

…the idea that there are certain things that all college students should learn would not necessarily meet with universal agreement in higher education today. For more than a century, higher education has been moving in an increasingly fragmented and individualistic direction, and these trends have accelerated in recent years. The vast majority of college students today say that they are pursuing a degree primarily to enter a career of their choice – which means that they are more likely to view their education as narrowly focused career training rather than as a broadly based preparation for life.

Yet for most of the history of American higher education – from the founding of the first American colleges in the 17^th century until at least the mid-20^th century – the idea that there were certain things that every American college student should learn in college seemed obvious to most professors and administrators. The reason that we have started to question this idea is because we have lost faith in any unifying principle of knowledge and have reduced college education to a set of individualized skills based merely on a student’s personal interest or career goals.

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Speaking of higher education needs, while the US offers plenty of options for Christian students—the plethora of Christian colleges and state universities with Christian ministries and study centers—this has not been the case in the UK in the recent past. But the newly founded Selden College, which will enroll its first class in October 2025, seeks to change this. Learn more about it here.

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Last but not least, Fall is the season for ALL. THE. CONFERENCES! This weekend, Front Porch Republic conference gathers in Grand Rapids.

I would have loved to be there, but had to miss this year, because Dan and I are about to head to another conference in just a few days: The biennial meeting of the Conference on Faith and History kicks off this coming Wednesday at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. You can learn more about the CFH from Christopher Gehrz, the talented program chair of this year’s gathering, who will then serve as CFH’s next president.

Stay tuned for an interview at The Arena next week with Jeff McDonald, who for the past ten years has organized the Presbyterian Scholars Conference at Wheaton. This conference has become a staple for Dan over the past few years, and this year, I look forward to tagging along to catch a few panels and visit with friends.

Finally, this is not in the fall, but Current writers and editors will gather at Grove City College this coming February, as part of the Christian Writers Conference. I am very excited to see old friends and meet some lovely people I’ve gotten to know through their writing/editing but have never met in person before!