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

Saturday Morning Sermons (IV)

This another excerpt from our sermon series in Acts.  The passage was Acts19:11-20, looking at Paul's "deliverance ministry" in Ephesus. 

My earliest and most vivid experiences with "deliverance ministries" was listening with chagrin-tinged flabberghastment to Bob Larson broadcast "call-in exorcisms" (and then advertise a wide range of expensive Christian "resources" between calls) on the local Christian radio station back in the day, so I've always been pretty cautious with this stuff.  But one of the things about a Biblical preaching ministry is that the text chooses us, we don't choose the text, so I had to exorcise my own Bob-Larson-demons and work through this one honestly. 

You can listen to the full sermon here, but here's a key insight that was really significant for me while I was working on the sermon:

I mentioned already that I don’t have a lot of experience in this area, so I’ve been doing a fair bit of research this week, and one of the things I keep coming across is that spiritual deliverance is about truth. Not power.

This is vital for us, because we’ve grown up with images of Linda Blair twisting her head around in the Exorcist and we figure that casting out demons is about some sort of power struggle with the devil. I mean: That’s certainly what the Seven Sons of Sceva thought it was about, wasn’t it? But when Jesus starts to set the captives free in Ephesus, notice it doesn’t happen through power.

Freedom comes through truth.

At least, that’s what it looks like in verses 18 and 19. It says that “many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly.”

Confessing the lies of Satan. Publicly renouncing them. And then claiming the truth. That’s what deliverance looked like in Ephesus: people bringing the lies of Satan out into the open—rejecting them—and then discovering the truth about who they are and how they’re loved in Christ.

Neil Anderson puts it like this: “In a power encounter, the struggle is between some outside agent and the demonic stronghold. But it’s not power that sets the captive free, it’s truth. Living in defeat, believers often falsely conclude that they need power, so they look for some religious experience that promises power. ... [But] the power of the Christian lies in the truth. ... In contrast, the power of Satan is in the lie, and once you expose the lie, you break his power.”

Jesus himself said it like this: you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

 

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