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

Home Improvement

My arms are sore. We're renovating our house and I've spent the last week tearing out, scraping up, pulling off and painting over the various floor and wall coverings in our basement. I have no delusions of competency when I start projects like these, but I do love the excuse it gives me to walk around the house in work gloves and grubby pants, swinging hammers at things.

I don't get a lot of chances to swing hammers in my line of work. Alhough somewhere in Alberta there's a house with a red tin roof I put on 10 years ago that hasn't blown off yet, and there's another house with a hardwood floor I installed that people are still walking on, my experience with build-it jobs is not vast.

But I love the sweat and ache of physical work.

Bonhoeffer pointed out that work is one of the four mandates God gave humans in the Garden of Eden. The sweat and ache may not have been original, but the Bible affirms that work-- doing constructive things with our hands and minds--is a good that God planned for us in the beginning.

In his book Work in the Spirit, Miroslav Volf asks why. What is it about work that makes it good? He maintains that modern theories of work, capitalist or Marxist, make it a means to strictly material ends: it accomplishes our immediate goals. He argues that such instrumental perspectives offer no boundaries to prevent work from becoming dehumanizing, degrading, even demonic. And he points to things like sweat shops, monotonous assembly lines and workaholic burnouts to prove his point.

Volf holds that the key to finding meaning in our work lies, of all places, in Christian eschatology-- what we believe about Christ's return and the end of the age. He argues that the hope of New Creation allows Christians to value their work now as a participation in the future renewal of all things under the shalom Christ. God's Spirit is at work in and on behalf of the creation, labouring towards its final consummation. And the Spirit calls us to join him, working towards that day when the healed nations will bring their glory and honor into the heavenly Jerusalem.

Volf's not alone in ascribing eschatological significance to our work. Paul wrote some strong words to the Thessalonian church about some Christians who were using the hope of Christ's return as an excuse to stop working. "Keep away from these lazy busybodies," he says. "That's not the tradition you recieved from us." Christian communities with a genuine Second-Coming hope will be places where work is valued, not as an end in itself, not even as a means to an end, but as a participation now in God's good and coming future.

This has transformed how I view my work. Whether teaching, or writing, or scraping floors, my work really matters to God. Not because of the bread it will put on the table, not because of the identity I will derive from it,but because Spirit himself is at work in and on behalf of my little corner of the world. He's toiling for its future transformation in Christ. And if I have eyes to see him, I can join him in this with my faithful, earnest, sometimes sweaty, work.

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