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

The Colors of Martyrdom

There's an old sermon from 7th Century Ireland called the Cambrai Homily.  It lays out an elaborate theology of Christian Martyrdom using Matthew 16:24 as a starting point ("Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me').  The Cambrai Homily famously categorizes martyrdom according to three colours:  red, white and green (though the actual hue of the third color is disputed; in Irish it's glas). 

"Red martyrs" are perhaps the most obvious.  They faced violent persecution, torture or death for the sake of Christ.  Red martyrs bled for Jesus. 

Such martyrdoms, of course, were both common and precious in the earliest days of the church (witness the horrors described so vividly in the Book of Revelation), but as Christianity became increasingly mainstream in the Roman Empire, bona fide martyrdoms got less and less easy to obtain.  On at least one occasion, a group of Christians actually turned themselves in to the Roman authorities, asking to be executed for Christ's sake (and creating no small amount of bewilderment for the Roman governor, who, if not sympathetic towards Christians, was at least indifferent, and certainly not hostile). 

So the church needed new ways for the faithful to express their death-defying commitment to Christ.  This they found in the concept of a "white martyrdom."  A white martyr did not shed literal blood for Jesus, but expressed his or her witness through some life-long vow of asceticism or other--a bloodless "death to the world" that might include things like: vows of chastity, monastic oaths, mendicancy, or becoming a hermit.  These are "white deaths" in lieu of the red.

Now this was old news by the 7th Century, but what the Cambrai Homily adds is the third color: a "green" (glas) martyrdom.  Green Martyrdom was about self-mortification and denying desire.  Fasting was a predominant form of "green martyrdom."  So were penitential acts like praying in the frigid Atlantic or spending the night immersed in water (this seems to be a common one).  A Green Martyr died to the immediate needs of the flesh, in order to turn the heart to God instead.

I've been thinking about the Cambrai's color scheme for martyrdom ever since I preached this sermon on the Martyrdom of Stephen, back in August.   You see:  I live in a world where desire is often seen as the driving mechanism of life: consumer desire drives our economy, emotional desire drives our entertainment industry, and, according one author at least, sexual desire drives the Internet (see Patchen Barss's book, The Erotic Engine). 

The point is: in a world where life is so closely associated with fulfilled desire, self-denial really does have the odor of death about it.  So I'm wondering today how radical a witness for Jesus we might have if we updated the tradition of the Green Martyr. 

What if we consciously saw denying those desires that no one in our culture thinks you can live without, as a stand-in for the honor of dying for Christ?

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