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

Give me your hands if we be friends

If it weren't so cliched and over-done, Midsummer Night's Dream would be my favorite Shakespearean play by far. As it is, it still makes it to my top five. I can verify from experience it's one of the few works of the Bard that will really get high school kids laughing together at the right times, and I have an untested theory that your house plants will grow thicker and fuller if you just read some of Titania or Oberon's best lines over them five minutes a day. I once came across a Freudian reading of the play that drew all sorts of evocative parallels between it and the myth of the minotaur, and I've never read it the same way since.

My wife and I saw a Shakespeare in the Park production of it in Barrie Ontario this summer. When our kids asked about it, I gave them a former-English-teacher's synopsis of the plot. They were so intrigued, they asked me about a month later to read Act V to them. We laughed together at the right times.

Then one afternoon my ten-year-old son, whose current hobbies include doing stop-motion animation movies with his Lego sets, asked me if I'd give him a hand with something. He'd started setting up a Lego version of "that play by that guy..." and he was hoping I'd help him with it. You've heard of hockey dads? I guess I'm a bit of a Shakespeare dad: I said yes.

It actually grew into something of a family project-- even our six-year-old got a part (a paraphrased version of the lion's part). And, all biases aside, I'm sure she would have done Mr. Shakespeare proud.

So, hoping it brings a bit of culture and light to terra incognita, I present to you the first all-Lego staging of: Bottom's Dream. (As you view, please bear Theseus's advice in mind: Nothing can be amiss when simpleness and duty attend to it).


3 comments:

Bradley Penner said...

My favorite Bard play is "The Taming of the Shrew." Maybe I betray my complementarian leanings by saying that!

Great video. I never had that much patience with Lego growing up.

When you are done with Boersma's book I'd like to know what you think. I read it last year for a course (BT 653) but we never really discussed it much.

Brad the Bard

Jon Coutts said...

This is incredible. I don't get Shakespeare at all.

d. miller said...

Fabulous!