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

On the Temptation of Christ (IV)

I said that my last post on this passage would be just that, but I don't suppose a series of reflections on Matthew 4:1-11 would be complete without at least passing reference to N. T. Wright's historical/psychological reading of the Temptation of Christ. From his incisive and monumental book on the historical Jesus, Jesus and the Victory of God, I offer these tantalizing thoughts, with the hope that they will lure you into reading his whole treatment of this episode in the life of Jesus:

"The struggle is precisely about the nature of Jesus’ vocation and ministry. The pull of hunger, the lure of cheap and quick ‘success’, the desire to change the vocation to be the light of the world into the vocation to bring all nations under his powerful rule by other means—all of these would easily combine into the temptation to doubt the nature of the vocation of which he had been sure at the time of John’s baptism. If you are the Son of God...

"There are many different styles of career, ministry, and agenda that Jesus might have adopted. Messiahs came in many shapes and sizes. It was by no means clear from anything in the culture of the time exactly how someone who believed himself to be the eschatological prophet, let alone YHWH’s anointed, ought to behave, what his programme should be, or how he should set about implementing it. Finding the way forward was bound to be a battle, involving all the uncertainty and doubt inherent in going out to unknown territory assumed to be under enemy occupation.

"When, therefore, we ask how Jesus conceived of the battle which he claimed to have fought as an initially decisive one [here Wright is referring to Jesus’ cryptic saying about binding up the strong man], the evangelists offer us a suggestion which we cannot lightly dismiss. That the battle had been successful from Jesus’ point of view is witnessed by the fact that he had not adopted any of the “messianic” styles offered to him by his culture. We cannot doubt that Jesus was tempted to share, and act in accordance with, the mindset of most Jews of his day. He cannot have been indifferent to the plight of his fellow Jews, as they were systematically crushed, economically, politically and militarily by Rome. The temptation to be the sort of Messiah that many wanted must have been real and strong. But it was, from the point of view of his mindset, precisely a temptation. He had faced it, and defeated it in principle, and had thereby confirmed the direction for the mission he should undertake."
(Jesus and the Victory of God, 458)

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