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

St Brendan's Prayer

And while I'm sharing musical adaptations of the prayers of Irish saints, I'll post this one, too.

St. Brendan the Voyager (484-577 AD) is one of the more fascinating of the early Irish saints. He's most famous for his voyage westward into the Atlantic Ocean, in search of the Island of the Blessed (which, if it happened at all, probably dates some time around 520 AD). The Voyage of St. Brendan the Navigator, the ancient Irish immram (a traditional navigational story) that recounts this voyage for us, describes such legendary adventures as his saying the mass to swarms of fish on Easter morning, landing on an island that turns out to be a giant whale (or in some versions of the story a sea monster named Jascon), and discovering mysterious lands in the western Atlantic, covered with vegetation. Some historians who have taken the time to sift through this fabulous hodge-podge of legend, hagiography, myth and history have suggested that the "western lands" in the St. Brendan legend represent, at the very least, pre-Colombian knowledge of the Americas among the early Irish seafarers.

There's a prayer traditionally ascribed to St. Brendan , and imaginatively set on western shores of Ireland, just before Brendan embarks on his dusk-treading sea voyage. Not that many of us will ever brave the wild white waves in any literal sense, but the imagery of the sea-voyage has always been archetypal for the spiritual journey (just ask Homer, or Melville, or C. S. Lewis, or John Patrick Shanley), and in that sense the prayer expresses something about the adventure and abandon of following Christ that still resonates; in that spirit I offer it here:



Here's the original text of the prayer that I was working from:

Shall I abandon, O King of mysteries, the soft comforts of home? Shall I turn my back on my native land, and turn my face towards the sea?

Shall I put myself wholly at your mercy, without silver, without a horse, without fame, without honour? Shall I throw myself wholly upon You, without sword and shield, without food and drink, without a bed to lie on? Shall I say farewell to my beautiful land, placing myself under Your yoke?

Shall I pour out my heart to You, confessing my manifold sins and begging forgiveness, tears streaming down my cheeks? Shall I leave the prints of my knees on the sandy beach, a record of my final prayer in my native land?

Shall I then suffer every kind of wound that the sea can inflict? Shall I take my tiny boat across the wide sparkling ocean? O King of the Glorious Heaven, shall I go of my own choice upon the sea?

O Christ, will You help me on the wild waves?

 

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1 comments:

Jon Coutts said...

this is great stuff

September 2, 2010 at 4:56 AM  

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