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

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

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

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

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

From the Paintbrushes of Babes

They say that, contrary to popular belief, the Beatles song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was not inspired by the psychedelic drug with the same initials. Rather, John Lennon's son came home from nursery school one day with a crayon drawing of a girl in his class. When asked about it he said: "It's Lucy-- in the sky with diamonds." And rock history was born.

When she was in kindergarten, my daughter brought home some inspiring artwork of her own: a painting of a flower garden with one giant rose rising above the others, and the words "I Live God" painted across the sky. She thought she was writing "I Love God," but she got the spelling wrong.

It hasn't inspired any monumental, era-defining rock songs (yet) but her "I Live God" (tempera on newsprint) hangs in a place of prominence in our home. And whenever I see it, it gives me pause. A serendipitous orthographic error, I think, because this enigmatic phrase, "I live God," innocently expresses something mysteriously profound about the Christian life, and about incarnation, and about what "loving God" really looks like.

In his book Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it like this: one of the colossal obstacles that stands in our way as we seek to experience the reality of God is the idea that there are two conflicting spheres, "the one divine, holy, supernatural and Christian, the other worldly, profane, natural and un-Christian." He argues that this idea of "two spheres" is in profound contradiction to Biblical faith: "There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is the reality of God, which has become manifest in Christ in the reality of the world."

A child's painting and a theologian's lofty ruminations. Both confront me with the truth that in Jesus, God has really revealed himself as Emmanuel, "God with us." In Jesus, the Creator has at last pitched his tent in the mire of our dust and clay, and staked his reconciling claim on the most broken, man-forsaken corners of our secular lives.

When I think about what makes Christian spirituality really Christian, I often think of "I live God." Because authentic Christian spirituality-- spirituality that takes the birth of Jesus as its starting place-- is convinced that life is no longer divided by sacred/secular, spirit/matter dualities. Rather our whole lives-- work and family and commerce as much as prayer and praise and preaching-- is lived in the transforming presence of God. There is no room at the stable for dualism-- nor at the cross, nor in the empty tomb. And when we discover that Jesus really is "God-with-us" in all aspects of our lives, we discover we can say "I live God" in a way that's more than just a spelling mistake.

 

Labels: ,

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)