Books by Dale Harris

Books by Dale Harris
A Feast of Epiphanies

Though I Walk, A Novel

Daytime Moons and Other Celestial Anomalies, a book of poems

Second Wind

Second Wind
An album of songs both old and new. Recorded in 2021, a year of major transition for me, these songs explore the many vicissitudes of the spiritual life,. It's about the mountaintop moments and the Holy Saturday sunrises, the doors He opens that no one can close, and those doors He's closed that will never open again. You can click the image above to give it a listen.

The Song Became a Child

The Song Became a Child
A collection of Christmas songs I wrote and recorded during the early days of the pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020. Click the image to listen.

There's a Trick of the Light I'm Learning to Do

This is a collection of songs I wrote and recorded in January - March, 2020 while on sabbatical from ministry. They each deal with a different aspect or expression of the Gospel. Click on the image above to listen.

Three Hands Clapping

This is my latest recording project (released May 27, 2019). It is a double album of 22 songs, which very roughly track the story of my life... a sort of musical autobiography, so to speak. Click the album image to listen.

Ghost Notes

Ghost Notes
A collections of original songs I wrote in 2015, and recorded with the FreeWay Musical Collective. Click the album image to listen.

inversions

Recorded in 2014, these songs are sort of a chronicle of my journey through a pastoral burn-out last winter. They deal with themes of mental-health, spiritual burn-out and depression, but also with the inexorable presence of God in the midst of darkness. Click the album art to download.

soundings

soundings
click image to download
"soundings" is a collection of songs I recorded in September/October of 2013. Dealing with themes of hope, ache, trust and spiritual loss, the songs on this album express various facets of my journey with God.

bridges

bridges
Click to download.
"Bridges" is a collection of original songs I wrote in the summer of 2011, during a soul-searching trip I took out to Alberta; a sort of long twilight in the dark night of the soul. I share it here in hopes these musical reflections on my own spiritual journey might be an encouragement to others: the sun does rise, blood-red but beautiful.

echoes

echoes
Prayers, poems and songs (2005-2009). Click to download
"echoes" is a collection of songs I wrote during my time studying at Briercrest Seminary (2004-2009). It's called "echoes" partly because these songs are "echoes" of times spent with God from my songwriting past, but also because there are musical "echoes" of hymns, songs or poems sprinkled throughout the album. Listen closely and you'll hear them.

Accidentals

This collection of mostly blues/rock/folk inspired songs was recorded in the spring and summer of 2015. I call it "accidentals" because all of the songs on this project were tunes I have had kicking around in my notebooks for many years but had never found a "home" for on previous albums. You can click the image to download the whole album.

random reads

Clean Hands, Dirty Oil

Tomorrow I'll present my recently completed research project on ecology and faith to a group of theology students at Briercrest Seminary. In many ways, this presentation marks the culmination of a half year of reading, thinking and writing about what a distinctly Christian position on the environment might look like. The specific question my project asked was: "To what extent should the local church's witness to the gospel include a biblically grounded response to contemporary ecological issues?"

After six months of studiously asking this question, my hopeful answer is: Certainly more than it currently does.

No doubt it’s tomorrow’s presentation that has me thinking so much these days about Bishop Luc Bouchard. He's the Catholic Bishop of St. Paul, Alberta, who made news last month for speaking out on the environmental issues surrounding the oilsands development in northeastern Alberta.

Alberta
’s oilsand industry produces more than a million barrels of oil a day. It also produces a motley crew of environmental controversies: the pools of toxic sludge that no one knows what to do with, the depletion and contamination of water tables, and the destruction of sensitive boreal forest ecosystems. As a Christian leader, Bishop Bouchard stands convinced that the "integrity of creation in the Athabasca oilsands is clearly being sacrificed for economic gain."

In an online pastoral letter, he calls on the 55,000-some Catholics in his diocese to act on their faith in response to these environmental concerns. "The present pace and scale of development in the Athabasca oilsands cannot be morally justified," he writes. "Active steps to alleviate this environmental damage must be undertaken."

The specific environmental and economic issues surrounding the oilsands are complex, but Bishop Bouchard's actions challenge me more generally. As I prepare to share my modest conviction with a group of Protestant/Evangelical theology students that the Faith actually includes some kind of ecological responsibility after all, here's a Catholic leader wading into controversy with his insistence that Christians simply cannot ignore the moral implications of the human exploitation of God's creation.

My own study of the Bible convinces me that as we say "Here I am" more and more deeply to the call of the gospel, we will naturally and inevitably become aligned to the environment in a way that promotes its good. In one of my most loquacious moments, I put it something like this: "We must see the Gospel of Jesus with renewed eyes-- the truly good news about the Creator's immanent reign through him over a redeemed humanity, the good news about the reconciliation between God and the world accomplished in his atoning death and victorious resurrection, the good news about the new-creation shalom and healing made possible through his poured-out Spirit-- for in the rays of light refracted by the multi-faceted gem of this gospel proclamation, we find the motive, the impetus and the spiritual resources for a healed and healing relationship with the rest of God's creation."

Wordy, but true.

May God renew our eyes.

And may he enable us to see the real answers to environmental crises that our faith in Jesus inevitably contains.

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