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

Commentaries on the Book of Philippians

This fall I preached a verse-by-verse study on the Book of Philippians at the FreeWay.  Being a relatively new pastor, whenever I start a new sermon series I try to invest in one or two commentaries to help build my fledgling library. See past entries for my reviews of the commentaries I used when preaching Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of John. Here are some thoughts on the three main resources I consulted in preparing my series on Philippians:

The Epistle to the Philippians (NIGTC).
Peter O'Brien
By far the best commentary on Philippians I encountered, O'Brien's work is thorough, erudite, weighty and insightful.  Sometimes his exegesis went deeper and his review of scholarly debates went broader than necessary for sermon prep-- and sometimes this required a good deal of sifting and distilling on the part of the preacher--but the fruit of the labor was well worth it.  It promises to be invaluable for more academic studies of Philippians (should the need arise); though for my immediate purposes, I found it helpful to couple it with other more homiletical and practical resources.

Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians
D. A. Carson.
While I was in seminary, I always found Carson's work with the ancient text to be disciplined, reliable and intently exegetical (sometimes almost stiflingly so).  His Exegetical Fallacies was required reading in one of my Greek courses, and his monumental commentary on the Gospel of John was a touchstone for a paper I wrote in Gospels class, so I came to Basics for Believers fully expecting the serious and careful handling of Philippians that I got. What I did not quite expect was the deeply pastoral and above all practical applications he would draw from his painstaking exposition.  Carson's ability to take scholarly minutiae about the obscure subtleties of Greek syntax and distill them down to concrete "basics" for believers is in stellar form in this slender volume.

Rediscovering Paul.  
David Capes et. al.
While not focused specifically on Philippians, Rediscovering Paul offered me a helpful overview of Paul's life, times and theology. While at times I felt it might have gone deeper, or expressed its ideas more clearly, it provides some interesting and inspiring insights into the man behind the letters. Among these is its discussion of the communal aspect of first century letter writing, and the influence of one's community on one's personal sense of identity, and how those issues might have played out in Paul's writings. Another challenging issue that it tackles is the whole process of letter writing in the Greco-Roman world, especially as regards the role a scribe often played in shaping the text, smoothing out the language or providing stock phrases, etc. Very helpful tertiary material.

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