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 first day of the rest of your life, a devotional thought

There's a fascinating sequence in the first chapter of the Gospel of John that often gets overlooked but is worth far more reflection than it usually gets. It’s right at the beginning of the gospel; we’ve just come through the Prologue (1:1-18) which talks about Jesus being “the word of God” that was there “in the beginning” and by which God created “all things that have been made.” Then it goes on to talk about Jesus as the life that was the “light of all mankind” that was “coming into the world.” As I often point out when I teach Bible studies on the Gospel of John, any 1st Century Christian reader worth their salt would recognize all of this as creation imagery lifted right out of Genesis. 

In other words, John’s telling a New Creation story, or rather: God has told one in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. 

So far so good, but then in John 1:29 you have this nondescript reference to “the next day.” You have to count, here, but when you do, something wonderful comes into focus: if 1:29 is “the next day,” that would mean that 1:19-29, where John the Baptist predicts the coming of Jesus was “the first day.” So 1:29-34 is the “second day” you might say. Then in 1:35 you get a reference to “the next day again,” making 1:35-42, where Jesus calls his first disciples, “day 3.” Another day (the next day...) begins at 1:43, when Jesus calls two more disciples. Then, in 2:1, where we have his first miraculous sign, the water into wine, we’re told it occurs “three days later.” In other words: the turning of water into wine, by which he “reveals his glory” (2:11), occurs on the 7th day after the introductory prologue that marked this book out as a New Creation story.

If I’ve done the math here correctly, that would mean, in essence, that 1:19-2:1 symbolically marks off, the “first week” of this New Creation story, a sequence of seven days reminiscent of the creation week in Genesis 1. And if I’ve done the exegesis right here, that would mean that the calling of the disciples (1:35-50) is part of the creative work that God’s doing, to bring this New Creation to its fullness in Christ. 

Who knew, that when you were called to be a follower of Jesus, God was doing there and then a Creative Work, something like what he did when he made the sun and the moon and the sea and everything in it, way back in the beginning? Follower of Jesus, welcome to the first day of a whole new world!

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