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

The no-TV decade



About 10 years ago or so my wife and I go rid of our TV. It wasn't a politcal or social or spiritual statement at the time, we just lived out in the country where reception was poor and cable expensive. If anything, it was (ironically) due to laziness: during a roofing project one summer we had to take down our aerial, and it just never got put back. Before long, life without TV had become so content and peaceful that it was hard to imagine wanting to put it back. (Okay: we still keep a DVD player in the basement for the occasional movie night or Corner Gas party with the kids, so I guess we're not purists.)

I read an old article by Robert MacNeil a long time ago. He extrapolated figures from the daily viewing hours of the average Canadian, to suggest that in the time saved by not watching TV over a lifetime, one could actually be reading Homer's Odyssey in its original Greek, having used those 3 hours a day to master the language. I haven't tackled Homer yet, but I have read the Greek New Testament 4 times, so maybe MacNeil was on to something. Among other projects that filled up those 21 spare hours a week (which, over the course of one TV-free decade, adds up to about 10,920 hours, or 455 days, or 1.2 years), I learned to play a passable piano and an okay saxophone, tried my hand at video editing and gardening and music recording and art and acting, read a lot of books, and even tried my hand at writing one (unpublishable), along with a musical (unperformable), and about 90 or so songs.

Now in most of these cases, "my hand" turned out to be not particularly adept, but my point is that I had a lot of fun--1.2 years worth of fun. And there's not much I'd trade those 10,920 hours for - not even for the chance to talk knowingly about all the episodes of Survivor I missed over the last ten years.

 

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1 comments:

Jon Coutts said...

we haven't had television for 6 months, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it. But what I don't miss are the things that pass as news, the celebrity worship and gossip, the commercials, and the times you get sucked into wasting an hour on something you didn't want to watch in the first place.

But good TV shows and movies are great. Its how the global village experiences one other.

February 6, 2010 at 6:03 AM  

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