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

Careful What You Ask For, a devotional thought

As we head into the Advent season, preparing for Christmas and all, I thought it might be worth spending some time looking at the opening chapters of Luke, and the stuff God was doing there and then, to get people ready for the birth of his Son.  So, for the next few weeks here at terra incognita, we'll be using the Luke's nativity material for our weekly devotional thoughts.

And it all starts with Luke 1:1-38, and a subtle warning to be careful what you ask for, when it comes to asking God for a sign.   In case you forget the story, or haven't heard it before: in the opening verses of Luke, an angel appears to Zechariah the priest, and tells him he's going to be father to John the Baptist.  Inasmuch as he and his wife are past the age of child-bearing, he finds this hard to believe and asks for a sign (literally, he asks, "how can I be sure of this?")  So Gabriel tells him that he won't be able to speak from that point on, until the child's born "because you did not believe."

Now: I always figured this was sort of a punishment, or a consequence of Zechariah's unbelief, but this morning it struck me that, at the same time, Zechariah's receiving the very thing he asked for: his supernatural muteness is in fact the sign he asked for, that the angel's words will indeed come true.

It got me thinking of times I've asked for a sign from God (recently, in fact, I've been praying this for some particular things in my life...) and it sort of occurred to me that, if and when God responds, if may not be at all what I'm expecting.  The sign may turn out to be something difficult to bear (as Zechariah's muteness must have been for him), and the way God carries me through the difficult thing (whatever it may be) may be the sign that he's up to something big, just round the corner, and his promises are right there on the cusp of being fulfilled.  This is, after all, what Zechariah's muteness was "signifying" for him, that salvation was about to break over horizon of the world.

May we all have the grace and the wisdom to receive the signs of God's good work in my life for what they are, even when they're not easy to bear.

 

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