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

The Bad Publicity of the Cross

This idea is only half baked, so I'm fine if someone wants to tell me to put it back into the oven for a while. It's just this: the other day I was subbing for a grade 12 class and in the five minute scrum before the bell they got talking at random about the end of the world. Apparently someone had done some research into the ancient Mayan calendar that predicts the world will end in 2012. They chewed this back and forth for a while, till someone asked me, "Don't Christians say the world's going to end, too?"

I did my best to explain: some Christians talk about the end of the world, but more accurately Christians believe in the end of the age and the resurrection of the dead, when Christ will return to establish his kingdom of peace.

One of the students sort of scoffed: "Yeah, and I believe in a plague of zombies that are going to take over the planet..."

Laughter.

I told them that they were free to laugh if they wanted to, but they also needed to know that I myself was a Christian and I shared this belief in the return of Christ.

He said: "Well, it's just that it's easier to believe in a plague of zombies than to believe in that."

From this point they started asking me what I knew about zombisim, and the conversation shifted.

But here's the half-baked thought that's been rising in my mind since this exchange. I have a feeling that if I'd shared about some esoteric belief from the Vedas, or about some mystical Nirvana experience, it would have got a better hearing than the credal belief in the Second Coming (even the Mayan calendar and Haitian Voodoo got more respect than the resurrection of the dead). And as I wondered about this, it struck me that the Vedas, the Mayan calendar, Nirvana, voodoo-- these things are all mysterious, mystical kinds of knowledge that are the special domain of the spiritual elite, kept hidden from public scrutiny. Unlike the public proclamation of the Gospel, they're spiritual secrets whispered in select ears.

And if someone's out to ridicule the faith convictions of others, these convictions are hard to ridicule because they aren't public. They're shrouded in an ambiguity that silences derision. But in the Gospel, God went public with his hidden wisdom. In the open scandal of the cross, he told the secret of his love for the creation to anyone who'd listen. He exposed it to public scrutiny.

And public ridicule.

Now this is not a typical, evangelical, "why's everybody always pickin' on me" pity-party. And I'm fully aware that there are non-Christian religious groups that our culture ridicules, some precisely because they are highly secretive; and I'm aware, too, that there was a lot of secrecy around communion and baptism in the early church, and the surrounding culture ridiculed them mercilessly for it. So my theory can't be pushed too far.

But still. I wonder if being open to scrutiny to the point of ridicule isn't fundamental to Christian faith. Because there has always been something scandalously public about following Jesus. The spiritual secrets he whispered in our ears he asks us to shout from the roof tops, in a way that makes us almost spiritually immodest next to the secrecy of many other systems of belief. Perhaps when we can humbly open ourselves this kind of scrutiny (and its attendant ridicule) without defensiveness or sanctimony, we will have really learned what it means to be followers of a crucified Lord.

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