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 Tomb of Lazarus, a devotional thought

In John 11:35 we see Jesus’ response to the death of Lazarus, one of his closest friends. It is pictured for us vividly in what is famously called “the shortest verse in the Bible”: Jesus wept. (Though technically this is only true in the English Bible. In the original languages, the shortest verse is Job 3:2, “And Job said.”)

What struck me, though, is that Jesus is not weeping tears of grief here. Or, if he is (he may be) he is also quite agitated. In verse 33 and again in verse 38 it says that Jesus “groaned in his spirit.” The original word there is embrimaomai, which comes from the root word brimaomai and suggests a sigh or groan of indignation or anger. Jesus is not only weeping, he is groaning with, of all things, frustration. Which sort of leaves us scratching our heads. I understand the tears, Jesus, but what is there to be angry about?

The text suggests the cause, but it doesn’t help: when he saw Mary weeping and the mourners weeping with her, it says, that’s when he embrimaomai-ed.

I am not sure why the sight of their grief over Lazarus would elicit this response in our Lord ... unless... maybe he’s not indignant at them for weeping, rather he is angry at death itself for bringing them to such a moment as this. Maybe it’s this glimpse of the harm that death causes, in the sight of these his friends mourning their lost brother, that touches him so deeply. Maybe he is "groaning" over the indignity, the tragedy, the ugliness of death itself.

If so, it would underscore something that the New Testament consistently claims everywhere else: that death is not the way things should be, that it is an enemy of what is good and right in God’s creation, and that God intends in the end to defeat it in Christ.

0 comments: