Category Archives: Stories

An Amazing First Novel: “Though I Walk” by Dale Harris

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A past student of mine, Canadian Dale Harris, has published his first, absolutely stunning, novel, called Though I Walk (Word Alive Press, 2021).

I was privileged to have Dale as a DMin student at Northeastern Seminary a few years ago. He wrote a wonderful paper for my course, which has subsequently been published in the Canadian-American Theological Review (2019).

Dale won the 2020 Braun Book Award for Fiction for his novel and received a publishing contract with Word Alive Press.

I was delighted to be asked to write an endorsement for the novel. This is what I said:

An exquisite tale of love, longing, and loss, set against the coastlines of Nova Scotia and the Aegean. Harris deftly intermingles Greek myth with the concreteness of love and the horrors of war. A stunning first novel.

Book Summary

The truths of the past are often the hardest to face.

When Grace Stewart’s fiancé Stephen leaves Halifax in 1937 to pursue his dream of becoming an archaeologist in Greece, neither of them expect that war will soon engulf the world, keeping them apart for nearly ten years. As Stephen gets caught up in the resistance movement on the island of Crete, Grace immerses herself in the war effort at home, held up by her faith and praying for his safe return.

Though her prayers are eventually answered and she and Stephen are finally reunited, he is never able to speak of the things he saw in Greece. After his sudden death in 1967, however, Grace discovers among his effects the journal he kept during that dark time… a journal which allows her to, at long last, piece together the unimaginable story of the man she thought she knew.

Amazon Review

Here is what a review on Amazon said about the novel:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding novel! Reviewed in Canada on April 13, 2021

I rarely read novels. But this one drew me in immediately and kept me coming back for more, in spite of my extremely short attention span.

It is a great story of love, loss, loyalty and longing. The characters feel very much like real people.

The author “shows” you the story. He doesn’t just tell you what happens. You feel as if you are there with the characters. The author’s attention to detail is magnificent! Halifax in the 30s and 40s and Greece during WWII come to life vividly in their parts of the story. The war scenes strike me as realistic, but they are not overdone in a sensationalized way.

Faith or spirituality of various sorts shows up at different points in the tale, but there is nothing preachy!
The book is so full of sensitivity to loss and grief, to unfulfilled longing and hope that many good things end up “sticking” to you while you journey with the winsome characters.

We have already given a copy to friends.

Get one and enjoy it.

The book is available in paperback or ebook format on Amazon.

Dale Harris Biography

Dale Harris is an author, songwriter, blogger, and pastor, though not necessarily in that order. He taught high school English in St. Paul, Alberta before being called into fulltime ministry, and has served as a Free Methodist pastor in the city of Oshawa, Ontario since 2009. He holds a Bachelor of Education from the University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB), a Master of Divinity from Briercrest Seminary (Caronport, SK), and a Doctor of Ministry from Northeastern Seminary (Rochester, NY).

Dale writes regularly about life, faith, and spirituality on his blog terra incognita, and he produces Three Minute Theology, a YouTube channel dedicated to communicating the deep truths of Christian theology through short, creative whiteboard videos. He is a prolific songwriter and publishes his music on Spotify and iTunes under the artist name D. Michael Harris. Through his writing Dale loves to explore the mysterious ways God is present to us in all aspects and every season of our lives.

Here is an article about the writing of the book on the Free Methodist Church website.

Walking and Driving while Black—Differences within America and between America and Jamaica

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Here are two tales of police encounters, both by black men in America.

One is by Esau McCaulley, my former colleague who taught New Testament at Northeastern Seminary (now at Wheaton College). The other is by Garnette Cadogan, a writer friend who moved from Jamaica to the USA some years ago.

Driving while Black

In “Driving while Black,” Esau describes his experiences with the police as a black man driving in Alabama, his home state. He then contrasts this with his later (quite different) experiences in New England.

Esau’s piece was published in July 2016 on an Anglican website called Covenant.

Walking while Black

In “Walking while Black,” Garnette describes his love of walking, which began on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, when he was a schoolboy. He then describes his very different experience walking the streets of New Orleans, and later New York.

Garnette’s piece was originally published in October 2015 in the inaugural issue of Freeman’s (an anthology of writings collected by John Freeman); the theme of this issue was Arrival. The piece was re-published in July 2016 on the website of Literary Hub.and also in The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (Scribner, 2016), ed. Jesmyn Ward.

Each of these is well worth reading.

You can access them on the web—Esau’s here, Garnette’s here.

Or you can download them as PDFs—Esau’s here, Garnette’s here.

I’d be interested in your thoughts; and I’m sure the authors would be too.

You can hear a PRI interview with Garnette Cadogan about his walking experiences here.

And you can watch his TEDx talk on walking here.

Speaking on a Biblical Worldview at Leeds—Again after Twenty Years

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This is the fifth installment about my journey through the UK.

From the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, I returned to nearby Leeds for a few more days, both to visit with David and Ruth Hanson and to give two talks (Friday evening and Saturday morning). I had a very relaxed time with the Hansons, involving lots of conversations and good food, plus a tour of downtown Leeds with David.

It was David Hanson who originally invited me to come to the UK to speak for he Thinking Faith Network, a Leeds organization that he and Ruth helped found some years back. The organization (I guess I should say organisation) exists to educate Christians in the UK about a holistic vision of life lived in God’s kingdom.

David initiated my visit because he wanted me to speak on the topic of my eschatology book, A New Heaven and a New Earth.

This was the second time I had come to the UK to speak in Leeds. The last time was twenty years ago (1997). Back then the Thinking Faith Network was called the West Yorkshire School of Christian Studies (WYSOCS). When my wife Marcia and I came to the UK in 1997, we first visited relatives in London, then we spent time with the Hansons in Leeds.

I remember giving two talks for WYSOCS, on the image of God/cultural mandate and on the problem of suffering. Although my talks this time around were new, the topics were similar (I guess my interests have been consistent over the years).

My talks for the Thinking Faith Network on this visit were on eschatology (tracing the motif of the image of God from creation to consummation), and the lament psalms (as a resource for addressing suffering).

A UK Speaking Tour

However, David Hanson suggested that if I was coming all the way across the Atlantic, I should do some more speaking in the UK. This resulted in a series of fourteen talks that I gave at eleven institutions in nine cities in Scotland and England. Although the talks I did at Leeds were the two talks I gave most often on the trip, I spoke on five different topics (some specially requested by the institution).

I’m very grateful to Richard Gunton, a volunteer with the Thinking Faith Network, who did the organising and liaised with the various groups I was speaking for. Richard made sure I had the requisite train or bus tickets for each leg of the journey (and that there was someone waiting for me when I got there) and also that I had accommodations in each city.

I was particularly blessed that Richard and his wife Diana accompanied me for two and a half of the most intensive days near the end of my trip—from Leeds to Oxford, then to Cambridge, and back to Oxford (then Richard put me on the bus to Cheltenham).

Richard and Diana made sure that I got where I needed to be on time (without them I’m not sure how I’d have managed the trip from Oxford to Cambridge and then back again, since it required two train trips with the London underground in-between).

It was also a genuine delight getting to know them both.

Humour and the Gospel

It was also great to reconnect with Mark and Anne Roques, who I first met in Canada, through the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) in Toronto. Mark had been a student there in the eighties and Anne had organized various conferences for the ICS, including one at which Brian Walsh and I spoke, back when we were writing our book The Transforming Vision.

Mark is an astute philosopher, who has developed an effective approach for reaching out to high school students and young adults in the UK. He has a particularly quirky sense of humour (it has to be spelled this way, since it is a distinctively British sense of humour), which can be seen in his penchant for telling weird and wonderful stories (combined with incisive worldview analysis), in which he takes his cue from Jesus’s parables.

Mark’s new book, entitled The Spy, the Rat, and the Bed of Nails, is a brilliant introduction to the rationale and art of storytelling in a postmodern world as an entrée to communicating the gospel; plus the book ends with a collection of stories (which he calls spiels) that he has used (some true, all wacky).

Mark has written a brilliant short introduction to Christian philosophy, called “Crocodiles and Philosophy.” If you can read this piece without bursting your sides laughing out loud, you have better control than I do.

You can read an interview with Mark Roques here (on his ministry, sense of humour, and the book).

My next post will tell the story of what happened after Leeds.