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

Top Ten Reads of 2008

I had a friend in university who prided himself on his Portuguese heritage. He used to quote this Portuguese proverb to me: "A donkey loaded with books is not a philosopher." It's stuck with me, and chastened me, over the years. A donkey loaded with books is no pastor, either; but then a pastor's library is one of his or her richest resources-- for ministry and spiritual formation. So I try to read as much, as broadly and as deeply as I can. In the interest of unloading the donkey, I offer my top ten reads of 2008:

10. Portofino. Frank Schaeffer.
A coming-of-age story about a boy growing up in an evangelical missionary family in Europe. No Catcher in the Rye, but it did have its humorous and touching moments. Frank Schaeffer, son of envangelical icon Francis Schaeffer, has some pretty negative issues with the evangelical tradition that he's put in more explicit terms in other books.

9. Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics. Oliver O'Donovan.
A really tough read, but worth it for the way it forces you to wrestle with the implications of the resurrection for the Christian life. O'Donovan is convinced that to be truly evangelical,we must make the resurrection the ground of all ethical action.


8. Fear and Trembling. Soren Kierkegaard.
A theological and philosophical meditation on God's command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Lots of existential stuff in there about the absurd "leap of faith" typified in Abraham's "teleological suspension of the ethical" when he offered his son.



7. The Koran.
There was lots I didn't follow, but two things I took away from the Koran: 1) I have a new appreciation for Christian convictions about the imminence of Christ through the Spirit; 2) I will probably not talk about Christian revelation as propositional the same way any more, after getting a glimpse of what "propositional" really looks like.

6. The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis. J. Richard Middleton.
An OT biblical scholar's look at what the idea that God created men and women in his image might have meant in its historical context. He argues that the idea is a radical democratization of the ancient Mesopotamian ideology of kingship, where the king alone was the "image of the god" on earth. Lots of healthy food for thought in there.

5. The Everlasting Man. G. K. Chesterton
I have a good friend who is a Chesterton aficionado; this is only my third sip from the deep cup of Chesterton's profound work (after Orthodoxy and Man who was Thursday). In substance, content and theme, it reminded me a lot of Augustine's City of God, looking at all of history in light of the person of Christ.

4. Unmasking the Powers. Walter Wink.
Building on his linguisitic/exegetical work in Naming the Powers, Wink shows how the "invisible structures" that humans create and participate in to control our reality, actually in turn exert control over us. A kind of theological version of Golding's Lord of the Flies.

3. For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care. Steven Bouma-Prediger.
I read a lot of books on ecology and faith this fall working on my research project for my M.Div. Steven Bouma-Prediger's book was by far the most thoughtful, creative and well-written.


2. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. Bill McKibben.
Transformed my thinking about economics, food, consumerism and ecology. You can see some of these transformed thoughts here.



1. The Climax of the Covenant. N. T. Wright.
N. T. Wright has had a huge influence on how I think, talk and preach about Jesus. Climax of the Covenant is a pretty technical analysis of Paul's Christology, and shows his considerable gifts for offering exegetically and historically incisive readings of familiar texts.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

In portuguese, the word for donkey, "burro" has double meaning. It also means idiot/fool.

So what he said was: an idiot loaded with books is not a phylosopher.