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

Words for People of the Resurrection

Colossians 3:1-10
The Real real You


Here's Sunday's sermon, and with it a few thoughts from the cutting room floor. In literary terms, Paul's ethical exhortation here, and especially the list of vices in verses 8 and 9, follows a literary form with a distinguished ancient pedigree, known as a "paraenesis." As a rhetorical device, paraenesis was pretty common among the moral philosophers of the ancient world, whereby they would exhort followers of their particular philosophical "path," by advising them on how best to follow that path. Paul seems to have co-opted the rhetoric of the moral philosophers here, though his ethical case rests not on some dead philosophy (see v. 2:8), but on the living reality that is ours through the death and resurrection of Christ.

But the thing that I wish I could have spent a whole other sermon on is the fact that the paraenetic exhortation of verses 8 and 9 focuses particularly on right speaking: slanderous talk, malicious talk, filthy talk, and deceitful talk are all listed among the dead practices of the "old self." Our everyday speech is one of the fundamental starting places where we genuinely begin to live out our new reality as people of the resurrection.

And this is not for nothing. Because Paul's paraenesis is all wrapped up in the Image of God theology that he alludes to in verse 10, the image of God theology that underlies his whole understanding of the resurrection itself and its meaning for us as Christ-followers (see 1 Corinthians 15:49). In the resurrected Jesus, we see the true Image of God, who himself fulfills the calling and reveals the destiny of humanity, in the ultimate fulfillment of what God meant when he said in Genesis 1:27-28: "Let us make man in our image." (Look at how Paul describes Jesus in Colossians 1:15ff., if you want more fodder for this canon).

Jesus is the Image of God, and in him, and through union with him by faith in him, the Image of God-- our calling and our destiny as men and women--is restored in us. This is deep stuff. But not too deep, because Paul seems to say: you want to follow this living philosophy? Then let it start with your plain, everyday, down-to-earth speech.

Because in the "Image of God" text that underlies this passage, God creates the world by speaking, and then creates humanity in his image and likeness. Without getting too technical, the idea in Genesis seems to be that somehow, as creatures made in the Image of God, we are called, in a very limited sense, to carry on and extend God's creative work in the world. And just like God created the world through speech, so too human speech has the capacity to "create worlds" -- the true or false, whole or broken, healing or hurting realities that we inhabit, and that are created for us through the everyday act of speech.

So: if the Image of God is indeed being renewed and restored in us through the creative work of Christ by his Spirit, it's no surprise that Paul says we should look for it especially in wholesome, healing, truthful and salt-seasoned speech. Because there we begin to discover our creative calling as creatures made in the Image of the Creator who brings reality into being by his flawless Word.

1 comments:

Rob Clements said...

Great sermon. When you were preaching it on Sunday I was wondering whether Paul uses "raised" and "resurrected" interchangeably anywhere in the NT. Having a quick look, I guess "raised" seems to be a shorthand way of saying "raised from the dead" elsewhere in the Pauline corpus, but here in Col. 3 it seems to mean "positionally raised."
Do you think "hidden with Christ" is a parallel expression for "being raised"?