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

By the Lakeshore with Jesus, a devotional thought

Compared to the three other Gospels, Mark comes across as brief, unpolished, even cursive at times. Yet for all this, many of his stories capture details that the other Gospels might minimize or edit out, but they leave you certain you're brushing up against the raw texture of a story remembered by those who were there.

Mark 4:1 is an example of this. I've always loved the description of Jesus sitting in a boat and teaching from the water because the crowds were so packed along the lake-shore that there was no room for him there. This is, I think, the sort of out-of-the-ordinary detail that would have lingered long in the telling and retelling of the event: "And then Jesusget thishe was almost pushed into the water by the crowds pressing in to hear him, so he hopped in a boat and shoved off into the lake, and taught them all from there!"

When I tried to visualize this, it sort of strikes me that today the crowds aren't "practically pushing Jesus into the lake" in their enthusiasm to encounter him. Even among Christians, you don't often see this sort of falling-over-yourself eagerness not to miss a thing he has to say; sadly, Jesus has plenty of room to move about freely in most Canadian churches.

It makes you wonder.  What had those crowds at the lakeshore that day *experienced* in Jesus, that we have yet to experience, that nothing in the world was so compelling to them as standing under his teaching as he taught? But it also makes you wonder this: what if the 21st Century Canadian Church was like that lake shore: crammed so full of people there to hear Jesus that it almost felt like there was barely room left for him? I think we'd find he was filling up the place to overflowing, if it were.

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