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

From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XII)

In Genesis 21:1-21 we find the heat-breaking story of Abraham's concubine Hagar and Ishmael her son, sent into the desert of Beersheba because of Sarah's jealousy. I'm fully prepared to accept the risk that I'm reading way too much into this here, but it strikes me as curious that in Genesis 21:16, when Hagar in her desperation abandons Ishmael under a shrub to die, it says that she "sat down opposite from him, about a bowshot away." And then in 21:20, after God's saved them both, it says (and it's this really random, throw-away line), it says, Ishmael grew up and became an archer. The connection between these two verses is even clearer in Hebrew, because the word for "bow," qesheth appears in both.

When he was just a child, his mother abandoned him and then sat down a "bow-shot" away to weep; when he grew up, he became a "bow-shooter" for a living.

I'm not sure what that means, if anything, but I love mulling over these weird details in the Bible. Maybe it means nothing. Or maybe it means that the Bible gets it, how the emotional traumas we experience as children actually do leave their mark on us, and in strange, subtle ways they set a course for our lives as adults. If I was given to flights of exegetical fancy I'd say something like this: As a lad, Ishmael almost died in the desert with his traumatized mom only a bow-shot out of reach, and he'd spend the rest of his life shooting a bow, haunted by the memory of that event and trying desperately to close the distance that once separated him from her. If nothing else, it gets me wondering, what events from my childhood might actually still be playing out for me in the decisions I make and paths I choose to walk.

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