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 Apprenticeship of Nicodemus, a devotional thought

There's a story in John 7 about a guy named Nicodemus. He's most famous for his encounter with Jesus back in John 3, where he comes to Jesus secretly, at night, to ask him some sceptical questions about his message and ministry. It's the exchange that prompts Jesus to say one of the most famous of all his sayings, about how much God so loved the world (John 3:16). That's not Nicodemus's only appearance in the story, though. He shows up again in Chapter 7, where he gets “smack-talked” by the Pharisees for speaking up in defense of Jesus. In this scene, the Pharisees are running Jesus down (their big critique is that he can’t be the Messiah because he’s only a Galilean hick), and Nicodemus timidly suggests that “we shouldn’t condemn him without hearing him first and finding out what he’s doing...” He gets shut down pretty quickly, like I say, but if you keep tracking with old Nicodemus, you’ll see that, after the crucifixion, he’s the one who provides the spices and myrrh for Jesus’ burial (19:39).

What stands out to me here is the progressive emergence of Nicodemus as a fully devoted follower of Christ: it starts with some clandestine questions asked skeptically in the dead of night, and it ends with him offering 75 pounds of myrrh for Jesus burial (an amount fit only for a king—Nicodemus is saying something pretty direct here about who he thinks it is that they’ve executed).

So what does the “spiritual evolution” of Nicodemus tell us? 1) That we ought never to downplay the curious inquiries of the seekers in our midst. That could be a Nicodemus-in-the-making asking us the tough questions, and we should take them seriously as such; and 2) That we ought never to discount the first tentative steps people make in standing up for Jesus. Nicodemus’s timid suggestion to his peers that they shouldn’t condemn Jesus before hearing him out was hardly a bold line in the sand. But it was the sign of a heart in crisis, a heart agonizing over what side of history it wants to be found on, a heart that will eventually put 75 pounds of myrrh on the line for his crucified King. Who knows what we may end up putting on the line for Jesus, if our first feeble efforts to take a stand for him are nurtured and honoured?

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