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 (6:11-14)

Esther 6:13 doesn't stand out as especially significant to modern readers like us, but it is, I think, or would have been, one of the key verses to the whole entire story, if you were one of the Jews in exile that this book was originally written for. Like a snowball at the top of a snow-laden peak, Haman has started to tumble, and his wisest friends tell him: “If this Mordecai before whom your downfall has started, is of Jewish descent (literally, of the “seed of the Jews”), you will not be able to stand against him—you will surely come to ruin.”

I call this the key to the whole entire book, because this reference to the “seed of the Jews” ties Esther’s story right back to the story of Abraham, and the founding promise that God made to his people back in Genesis. In Genesis 12, God tells Abraham, the Father of the Jewish people, “I will make you into a great nation ... you will be a blessing ... and I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you ... and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” This is the Magna Carta, in a sense, for the people of God, and a bit later (Genesis 15:5, 17:7), God expands the promise to include the language of “Abraham’s seed” (i.e. his descendants) specifically. Haman’s friends are speaking truer than they know: if Mordecai is in fact of Abraham’s “seed,” he stands under God’s sure promise: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” The whole ironic drama of the Book of Esther, in fact--all the unexpected coincidences and miraculous near-misses that, looking back on it we can call almost comical--is actually just the logic of this ancient promise playing out. Inasmuch as Haman has “cursed” Abraham’s seed (see above on his genocidal plot), he stands self-condemned, and his destruction is sure and inescapable (and all without Mordecai even lifting a finger). For an ancient Jew in exile, torn from his homeland and surrounded by those who would gladly curse him, this assurance of God’s faithfulness would be a bright beacon of hope in an otherwise dark night.

We’re not ancient Jews in exile, of course, but through Christ, who is the true “Seed of Abraham,” we are included in the Abrahamic covenant, so let me suggest a way to take this all to heart, today, some 2500 years later. Because the promise was actually twofold—God will defend the cause of his people, on the one hand, and he will make his people a blessing to the nations, on the other. And as Christians, we are scattered among the nations in a way not entirely unlike the exiled Jews in Esther’s day. Like them, can we find solace and challenge in God’s promise to Abraham? Solace, to know that he will take up our cause against all the Hamanesque Powers ranged against us, but challenge, too, to know that God has scattered us among the nations for the express purpose of blessing all the peoples of earth through “Abraham’s Seed.” Can we let him take up our cause against Haman, even as we take up the cause of being a blessing to the nations?

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