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 Girl Queen, the Captive Conqueror: A Devotional Commentary on the Book of Esther (6:1-10)

Esther 6:1 lies right at the literary centre of this story, and the narrative unfolds on either side of this verse in a chiasmic structure. Chiasm (meaning ‘X’ in Greek) was a very common story-telling device in Hebrew literature, where the story follows an A-B-C-D-C-B-A kind of pattern (or an ‘X’ shape, if you can visualize it). Let me illustrate:

A1. The King’s great Feast (1:1-12)
..B1. Esther made Queen, with feasting (2:1-17)
....C1. The King’s decree to destroy the Jews (3:1-15)
......D1. The King offers Esther up to half his kingdom (5:3)
........E1. Esther’s 1st banquet (5:5-8)
..........F1. Haman plots to murder Mordecai (5:9-14)
............G. The King can’t sleep (6:12)
..........F2. Haman forced to honor Mordecai (6:4-14)
........E2. Esther’s 2nd banquet (7:1-2)
......D2. The King offers Esther up to half his kingdom (7:3)
....C2. The King’s decree to save the Jews (8:1-14)
..B2. Mordecai royally honored, with feasting (9:15-17)
A2. The Feast of Purim (9:18-32)

So that’s pretty tidy, but there’s more going on here, I think, than just fitting the story into a nice neat pattern. Usually in a Hebrew Chiasm, the key idea of the story is found at the centre of the chiasm, in this case at point “G”: the King can't sleep. This is the turning point for Esther and her people. Chapter 5 ended with the ominous sounds of Haman building his gallows; Chapter 6 opens with this insomniac king. A chance sleepless night, but it leads to him asking for the records to be read (a little bedtime reading, I guess) and, coincidentally, he comes across the record of Mordecai’s hitherto unrewarded good deed, back in chapter 2. Haman (again coincidentally) enters at just that moment and, thinking the King’s talking about himself, tells him to lavish riches and royalty on the “man the King delights to honor.” Little does he know the King was talking about Mordecai. So begins the slow, somewhat comic, totally unexpected ascent out of the utter despair of 5:14. And the story, as I’ve said, will reverse the fortunes of God’s people, step for step all the way back up.

And here’s where I’m going with all this: it seemed like a random sleepless night for King Ahasuerus, and yet, when you step back, and see how his insomnia fits in to this bigger, orderly scheme, you realize that it was no coincidence at all; nor was Haman’s random entrance at the moment the record books were being read; nor was Mordecai’s “chance” uncovering of a plot to kill Ahasuerus back in chapter 2. All these events, it turns out, happened “for such a time as this” (4:14). There is an order to God’s activity in this story that is invisible until you step back to see it all laid out, but when you do it’s beautiful and compelling, even at times comical.

It leaves me wondering about the 1001 apparently random coincidences that happen to me day in and day out, and how seldom, really, I notice God’s overarching “chiasm” to the events—that is to say, I seldom stop to wonder if this chance occurrence isn’t God doing or saying something really important right now. I usually just slog on, going about my business unawares. I posted earlier about how careful we need to be not to name God before he’s ready to reveal himself. I think the author of Esther would also say, “Yeah, but when he does reveal himself, you’ll see: there are no accidents with God.

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