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

In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, a song

In the Buddhist tradition there's this teaching about something called "The Hungry Ghost" which is a certain way of being or spiritual state.  A hungry ghost is a spirit with a very narrow throat and a huge distended belly; it's always stuffing itself but never filled.  It's a picture of human emptiness and spiritual despair at its worst.

Last year I read a book by Dr. Gabor Maté about addiction, called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Maté works in Vancouver's downtown east side, among the most severely addicted population in the country.  In his book, he uses the image of the hungry ghost as a way of talking about addiction.  The addict, he argues, is like the hungry ghost: desperately striving, but unable, in the end, to fill the emptiness inside.

It's a haunting read.  Because Gabor goes on to suggest that in one sense or another, we are all hungry ghosts.  Our addictions are not always as powerful or destructive as those of his patients in Vancouver's downtown eastside, but in their psychology--in terms of what we're looking for in them and hoping to achieve by them--obsessive work habits, compulsive viewing of pornography, impulsive spending, over-indulgent eating and so on are not really that different from the hungry ghosts of the heroin addict.

Here's a Ted Talk he gave a while ago.  Very much worth a listen.




And here's a song I wrote, about my own "hungry ghosts," such as they are:



The ghosts in my head
Are hungry tonight
They haven’t been fed in such a long time

It’s been forty years
And they’re wandering still
With their own empty tears to quench the thirst

Swollen bellies filled with empty dreams
Narrow throats choked with silent screams
Always eating, always empty
I got these ghosts inside of me

The ghosts in my head
Are hurting tonight
Something that was dead came back to life again

They turn wine into water
And bread into rock
Till nothing else matters but feeding them

Swollen bellies filled with empty dreams
Narrow throats choked with silent screams
Always eating, always empty
I got these ghosts inside of me

And it’s so lonely in the realm of hungry ghosts
You can wander round for days
Don’t lose your way in the realm of hungry ghosts
Cause there’s no one there to point the way

Swollen bellies filled with empty dreams
Narrow throats choked with silent screams
Always eating, always empty
I got these ghosts inside of me

0 comments: