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

Three Minute Theology 1.3, Sounds Like the Trinity


One of the implications the Trinity is that God exists in eternal, loving community within God’s-self.  The Father begets the Son, the Son does the Father’s will, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, as a bond of love between them. 

The ancient theologians used the Greek word “perichoresis” to describe this relationship.  Perichoresis is difficult to translate.  Literally, it sort of means “rotating-forward-around,” and it’s trying to get at the way the Persons of the Trinity move in and through and around each other.  Any activity of one is always an action of all three; and yet whenever God is at work, it’s still possible to differentiate between the unique work of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The word did not originally have the connotation of “a dance,” but in popular theology, “perichoresis” is often translated as “a dancing around,” and is used to suggest that there is a joyful “dancing around each other” going on between the Persons of the Trinity.

This is difficult to visualize, but perhaps a non-visual metaphor may help. 

In music, a chord is made up of three notes, played together at the same time.  A major chord, for instance, is made up of the first, the third, and the fifth notes of a given scale.  If you took the C scale, let’s say, and played the ‘C,’ the ‘E’ and the ‘G,’ you would have a C Major chord.

Now: a C chord is a single auditory experience—that is:  you hear it as a single thing.  Yet at the same time, the Chord is made up of three distinct, individual notes—C, E and G.  And each of these notes completely fills up the sound-space.  There is no ‘part’ of the chord where one of these three notes isn’t fully present, and you can always distinguish each individual note within the chord.

The notes of a C Major chord, we might say, inter-penetrate each other in a “perichoretic dance.”  That is to say, whenever you hear a C major chord, you are always hearing three individual notes, and yet at the same time, you’re hearing a single chord.

This musical analogy helps us get at the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in ways that visual metaphors simply can’t. 

For instance, in a chord, there is no hierarchy between the notes—you can play them in any order, and yet it’s always the “First” or “Tonic” note that determines the Nature of the Chord. 

The “Fifth” note, or the “Dominant” is always directly determined by the Tonic note.  Whatever your tonic note is, the next note is going to be a perfect fifth above it, in this case “G.” 

The third note, while seemingly third in importance, actually determines the tonal quality of the whole chord: if we play a perfect third, we get a major chord, if we drop it a half step, we get a minor chord, even though the other two notes stay the same.

In a similar way, the Father begets the Son—like the tonic note determines the dominant—and the Holy Spirit flows out from the Father and Son, expressing the bond of love between them—like the perfect third harmonizes between the first and the fifth, making  it a major chord and not a minor.  

And like the Persons of the Trinity, each of these notes completely “interpenetrates” the other, making an indivisible sound without losing their unique, individual identity.


While this is difficult to wrap our heads around, the way the Persons of the Trinity exist in a perfect relationship with each other, where each is fully One with the other and yet maintains their unique Personhood, is crucial to the Christian Faith, because Jesus said that he wanted this same kind of unity for us.  “That you may all be One,” is how he said it, “just as the Father is in Me and I in him, and that you may also be in us.”

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