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

Me 2?

Contrary to appearances, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, though some exotic bronchial infection has been having a house party in my chest this last week, kicking my life into survival mode and leaving me with little left to give when it came time to blog. Meanwhile, the page has turned on October and it's time to pick a new "Disc of the Month." (See the sidebar.)

Lately U2's No Line on the Horizon's been getting a lot of airtime on the drive to and from work. Now, it hasn't been nearly as earth-shattering an aural experience as Achtung Baby (the best rock album of the 90s?), but I've really enjoyed this latest U2 effort. Lots of memorable moments: the weird cello on "Breathe," Bono's falsetto lunge on "Crazy Tonight," the rumbling rhythms of "Being Born." Even "Get on Your Boots," though it kinda confused me when I heard it as a single, somehow, in context with the rest of the album, makes perfect sense.

Anyways, still convalescing a bit, I don't have much to say, except to share some of my favorite lines from this Month's CD of the Month:

1. I gotta stand up for faith, hope, love/ but while I'm getting over certainty / stop helping God across the road like a little old lady

2. I found grace inside the sound, / I found grace, it's all I've found

3. I was speeding on a subway/ Through the stations of the cross

4. Every day I die again and again and reborn / Every day I need to find the courage / to walk out into the streets

5. It's not a hill it's a mountain / as you start out the climb

6. The roar that lies on the other side of silence / The forest fire that is fear so deny it

7. Listen for me, I'll be shouting / Shouting to the darkness / squeeze out sparks of light

1 comments:

Jon Coutts said...

Perhaps I shelved this CD too quickly. I'll have to listen to it again. Some good stuff there. A U2 CD that isn't Achtung or Joshua Tree can still be something.

I think quote number 7 is a variant on what it seems is a favourite theme/line of Bono's(borrowed from Bruce Cockburn's Lovers in a Dangerous Time): "You've got to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight." I can't actually remember right now what U2 song it first appears in, but he's quoting a voice "on the radio, late last night". Is it "Silver and Gold"?

Dude, I wish I had time right now to listen to all these sermons. Perhaps sometime. If I come back to them I'll start with this one though. It seems to address somethhing you and I have gone back and forth on often!! You'd have enjoyed our Barth seminar reading today. He talked about the already/not yet alot.

In one part where he was emphasizing the "already" and the "yet" of the "not yet" (as opposed to emphasizing the "not"), I couldn't resist writing in the margin: "Dale wins". (Not that you and I have a fight over this or anything, but in emphasis I think we often came at this from different angles (me railing against triumphalism and you reminding me of the primacy of the triumph) and in that sense I'm glad to have that verbal reparte!)

Sorry to everyone else in Dale's blogland, that won't really make sense.