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

Hypocrisy and the Modular Mind

So today's episode of CBC's The Current provided more than its fair share of blog-fodder for an explorer of spiritual terra incognita like myself. First was Neil Morrison's fascinating report about social scientist Alex Todorov, who has conducted indepth studies of our subconscious reactions to the human face. He found that when he showed children photos of political candidates and asked them to choose, based solely on facial appearance, which person would "make a better captain" for an ocean voyage game they were playing, their immediate gut reactions were able to predict actual election outcomes with more than 70% accuracy. This was fascinating enough, but then he reproduced his results with a group of PhD-credentialed psychologists, who should have known better than to let such prejudices get the better of them. His conclusion: our immediate, gut-level reaction to the faces of candidates plays a substantial (even deterministic) role in shaping how we will vote.

And while I was mulling over the theological significance the Scriptures place on the human face, and how the Pharisees, for instance, commended Jesus precisely because he refused to "look into the face" of men, and what light this might shed on Alex Todorov's study, The Current went on to talk about the controversy surrounding circumcision. They interviewed a lady who's heading a movement in the States to have neo-natal circumcisions banned, despite recent studies which suggest that circumcision significantly reduces the risk of HIV and other STD's (the lady from NO-CIRC they interviewed bandied about words like "child mutilation," "torture," and "excruciating, unnecessary pain"). And I couldn't help but ponder the theological significance the Scriptures place on circumcision as the mark of the Abrahamic covenant.

Anyways, for a blogger curious about intersections between culture and faith, The Current's fruit was indeed low-hanging and tantalizing today.

But then they went on with this segment about hypocrisy. If you have the 25 minutes to spare, give it a listen; if not, let me give you the Coles notes. Robert Cursban argues that it is decidedly hypocritical of us to denounce our politicians as "hypocritical," inasmuch as hypocrisy is built into the very architecture of our brains. He shared some neuroscience which suggests that the neurological systems which govern our behaviour and the systems which govern ethical decision making are distinctly isolated from one another, and there is nothing in us that naturally keeps these systems functioning in consistent ways. He describes this "natural inconsistency in our neuro-physiology" as having a "modular mind" (i.e. a mind in which behaviour and ethics are neurologically compartmentalized). And he says that biologically speaking, we all have modular minds.

Hearing Robert Cursban talk about the "modular mind," and that missing "something" which keeps our neurological systems functioning consistently-- the predisposition to hypocrisy that seems coded into our very DNA--I couldn't help but think of Jesus. And Matthew 7:1-6. And the vitriol he reserved for only the most hypocritical of his religious contemporaries. And I couldn't help but wonder if the wholeness that Jesus invites his followers to experience is profoundly more than any mere metaphorical wholeness. Perhaps it is a breaking down, in a very real sense, the natural walls of our modular mind.

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