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

You gotta cleave to someone, A Devotional Thought

In 2 Kings 18, you come across a simple single verse that, if you'd been reading 2 Kings right from the start, would, and should turn your head.  It's at the start of King Hezekiah's reign and it simply says, "he did right in the eyes of the Lord."  After years, and years, and years of kings who piled sins upon sins upon sins, along comes a king who "did right in the sight of the Lord, just like his father David." 

This is extremely rare. A few other kings get this accolade (Asa, Jehoshaphat, Josiah), but Hezekiah is in a category all his own. He even removed the high places, and he's the only king in 2 Kings to do so. 2 Kings 18:4 is a sit up and take notice kind of verse, about a sit up and take notice kind of king.

And here's what I notice when I sit up: the secret to Hezekiah's spiritual success is that he "clung" to the Lord (dabaq, 18:6). The word there that describes Hezekiah's commitment to YHWH is actually the same word that Genesis 1 uses when it talks about Adam and Eve and the first ever marriage, and it says, "for this reason, a man will leave his mother and father and cleave (dabaq) to his wife." Hezekiah's faithful commitment to YHWH was of marriage-vow quality: he clave to the Lord. There're a few other times this word gets used in 2 Kings, and all the rest are bad: Solomon "clung" (dabaq) to his foreign wives and they led him astray, King Jehoram clung (dabaq) to the sins of his father and led Israel astray. 

To modify Bob Dylan only slightly, "You gotta cleave to someone..."  We are designed, that is, to be betrothed to something, to someone.  We have clingy hearts. Unlike the Kings before him, who set their clingy hearts on anything but the Lord, Hezekiah clung to God, and millenia later he's still remembered for it. And the challenge of his story is that we would do the same, and fix our clingy hearts on Him.

 

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