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

From the Grave to the Sky

Those of you who follow the liturgical calendar closely might know that today was Ascension Sunday. (Technically, the day of the Ascension of our Lord was Thursday the 21; but because it doesn't actually fall on a Sunday, churches may choose to observe the Ascension on the Sunday instead).

The Ascension never got much press in the church tradition I grew up in. Maybe it seemed a bit too high church, maybe we felt we had our hands full enough with Christmas and Easter (and Mother's Day...). Not sure.

But if salvation is all about what God has done to reconcile humanity to himself and draw us up into the life of divine fellowship, then the Mount of the Ascension is an important landmark on the horizon of that story. Because it's on that sacred peak that we watch our Lord take the resurrected and redeemed flesh of our humanity into heaven, to sit at the right hand of Glory and intercede on our behalf in the Most Holy Place; and there, too, we are offered the assurance that one day he will return to us, coming in the same way we saw him go into heaven (Acts 1:11).

My friend Jon has posted some great thoughts about the meaning of the ascension on his blog here. Well worth reading and meditating on. One of the authors he quotes suggests that in terms of its theological significance, the ascension should get as much emphasis in the church year as Christmas does. Food for thought.

I heard Jon preaching a while back. He was referring to a painting of the ascension and he mentioned how hard it was for him to see it, because sometimes he felt like those apostles on that mountain top, longing for Jesus to stay. Then he said: "I know this might sound cheesy, but I wish he was here."

Now Jon's a very sincere guy; I think if anyone could say something like that without sounding the least bit cheesy, it'd be him. His words haunted my heart for a while, until I finally sat down and tried to turn them into a song. At the time I had this sad/jazzy arrangement for the song "All Heaven Declares" that I was working on, and I thought: what better way to evoke the tension between the already and the not-yet of the Kingdom, than to take a tune normally used to exult in the "already" of Christ's reign, and give it words expressing deep ache over the "not yet" of His return?

Well, it's no turkey dinner with all the trimmings, but I thought I might offer it here as a bit of an Ascension-day present. You can click here to "unwrap" it.

Every blessing as you remember the ascension of our Lord.

1 comments:

Jon Coutts said...

a fantastic song. so good!