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

Mary, Martha and the Good Share

Last night before we went to bed, my wife told me about this news article. It describes the recent "family law" that Afghanistan's president has reportedly approved for the Shia minority in his country. Apparently the law will, among other things, make it illegal for Shia women to refuse to have sex with their husbands, have custody of their children, or leave the house without permission. Canadians have expressed astonishment and outrage at the possibility that all our risk and expense and sacrifice in Afghanistan might unwittingly result in this kind of government-sanctioned women's-rights abuse.

Canadians are asking "was this what we were fighting for?"

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon is seeking clarification from Afghan cabinet minsters.

And I'm thinking of Mary and Martha.

Do you have a flannel-graph vision of this story haunting your childhood, too? Jesus visits two sisters. As the practical-minded Martha makes busy in the kitchen, preparing the meal, the spiritually-minded Mary sits at the Lord's feet, hearing his word. Finally fed up with doing the housework alone, Martha asks Jesus to tell Mary to give her a hand. But he gently affirms Mary's choice: she has chosen "that good part which shall not be taken away from her."

If you're like me, you grew up with the impression that the point here was to contrast Martha's hustle and bustle with Mary's serene contemplation. "We need to learn to have a contemplative, Mary-spirit in a bustling, Martha-world."

Not long ago I read an article by N. T. Wright that sheds some pretty piercing light on what the "better share" that Mary chose might really have been. Wright points out that the obvious and scandalous thing here for a first-century reader (and, perhaps, a reader in places like Afghanistan today), is that rather than keeping to the back rooms with the other women, Mary is sitting at the Rabbi's feet in the male part of the house. He suggests that this is the source of Martha's indignation. Mary has cut clean across one of the most basic social conventions. To help you feel the scandal of what Mary has done, Wright asks you to imagine you'd invited him to stay the weekend at your house and, as it got around bedtime, he went and set up a camp-bed in your bedroom. In Mary's culture, there are certain places a woman just did not go. And sitting at the feet of a rabbi--the place where you trained to be a rabbi yourself-- was emphatically one of those places.

Martha isn't just asking for Mary to lend a helping hand. Mary has quite brazenly flouted a socially-coded gender role, by seeking a place as a rabbi-in-training under the Master. Martha is asking Jesus to put Mary back in the place where, as a woman, culture says she "belongs."

She's asking Jesus to ratify her society's gender code. And this is exactly what Jesus will not do: Mary has chosen the "good share" of the work, and it won't be taken from her.

Wow.

In calling Mary's choice "the good share," Jesus has spoken good news for the men and women of Afghanistan. And for the men and women of Canada, too. Because Jesus refuses to rubber-stamp a gender code that functions simply to keep women "in their place." Instead he invites them to find their place, discovering what it really means to be a "biblical" woman, sitting together with biblical men, in training at his gracious feet.

1 comments:

Jon Coutts said...

This is a great insight on an old old story, put right into perspective. Well said.