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 Esther (8:1-10)

In 8:6, Esther asks a rhetorical question that sort of stops us in our tracks; or at least I think it's meant to. She’s beseeching the Emperor to reverse his edict to destroy the Jews, and she says, “How can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family?” It is, like I say, a rhetorical question, and the point is, she can’t bear it. So heart-wrenching would that loss be, that she’s willing to risk everything--status and wealth, peace and comfort, life and death itself--in an effort to save them.  I say it should stop us in our tracks, because if we listen closely hear, I think we will hear the Word of God asking us, as Christians, "Do you share Esther’s heart for the harried and threatened People of God?"

There are some theological dots we need to connect here, before this question comes into focus, but once you do connect them, it should give us all pause. This story is about the attempted annihilation of the Jewish People, of course (and lest we forget, the history books can confirm that this isn't the first or the only time insidious “Hamanesque” powers have attempted to wipe Abraham’s family from the face of the earth); but the Christian conviction is that, through the self-offering of Jesus Christ, a 1st Century Jew from Nazareth, we Gentiles are now grafted into the Jewish story, the Family of Abraham, the People of God (see Romans 11:11-24 for more in this one). Esther’s Story can only become our story through faith in Jesus, who invites us into it; but in Jesus, this story does indeed become ours. It becomes, in fact, the story of the whole “Israel of God” (Gal 6:16), Jew and Gentile, wherever and however they are threatened with annihilation.

And here’s where Esther stopped me in my tracks. Because there are parts of the world today where God’s People are still facing very real—all too real—persecution. Not in comfortable, tolerant Canada, perhaps, but in those parts of the world where belonging to Abraham's Family (by birth or by faith) invites all sorts of abuse, danger and persecution. And I confess that I don’t take the plight of my brothers and sisters in Christ as seriously as Esther took the plight of her people. Esther asked Ahasuerus, “How can I bear to see my people destroyed?”; and with that question, God turns to his people today and asks: “How can you?”

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