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

Babbling French and Other Blessings

I learned to speak French as a high school exchange student in Quebec. A few years later, with the confidence of that "hands-on" learning experience under my belt, I walked into a drugstore in Paris and, in my best Quebec accent, asked if they sold razors. We'd been traveling for a month or so and I needed a new one.

The shopkeeper just gaped at me with a look somewhere between confusion and disdain. A chimpanzee might just as well have loped up to him and babbled something about wanting bananas. Though I don't know what I said wrong, I learned that day that there is more than just geography separating the French of Quebec and France.

I was reminded of this mis-fired linguistic exchange the other day when I heard a story on CBC Radio about Jean Charest's recent visit to Paris. The Parisian diplomat who was meeting him at the airport, earnest to be a good host, wanted to welcome him with a genuine gesture of linguistic goodwill. He did some research and discovered how to ask him if he was tired (after his long flight) using a unique Quebecois idiom. Unbeknownst to this well meaning Parisian, the particular idiom he used was a slightly crude expression not exactly suited to polite society: as Jean Charest disembarked the plane, he was greeted warmly and asked if he didn't have his "*slang term for female anatomy* dragging on the ground."

The story made me laugh a bit.

But mostly it made me think of the Tower of Babel.

From the illustrated Bible versions of the Babel story I was raised on, I always had the impression that God's original aim was to have one unified language, where we could all communicate
unambiguously; and that the linguistic confusion, like the kind heard on the Parisian tarmac that day, was really God's curse on humanity because of their overweening pride.

Today I'm not so sure.
Though we often talk about the "curse of Babel," it's important to note that the story never uses the word "curse." J. Richard Middleton points out that in Genesis 10, right before the Babel story tells us there was only one language, we're given this elaborate table of the descendants of Noah, listed "according to their peoples and languages." Middleton then points out that one of the imperialistic policies of Babylon-- a policy, no doubt, that the author of Genesis was well aware of-- was to enforce its own language on the people it conquered. We see this policy at work in the opening verses of Daniel (and, incidentally, throughout history-- from Stalin to residential schools to William the Conqueror, it seems an "effective" way to keep an oppressed people oppressed has always been to silence their language). Middleton argues that the story's vision of a "one-language state" is actually intended as a picture of the distopian structures of the Babylonian Empire whereby it enforced linguistic unity on its subjects.

If Middleton is right, then by confusing the speech of the tower-builders, God is judging the oppressive, imperialistic power structures of Babylon (and every Babylon-like empire since). By affirming and insisting on a rich diversity of human languages, God is actually unmasking and disarming those oppressive, dehumanizing systems that need us to all talk (and think) alike in order to maintain their power.

This would mean that the day I walked into a Parisian pharmacie and left without my razor, as frustrating as it was, maybe I was actually tasting one of God's blessings to humanity. And maybe the day Charest looked askance at a French politician who had just asked him innocently enough if he was "dragging his ass," maybe God was saying yet again: "I don't want human-life-together to ever be so unambiguous that it becomes tyrannical."

Maybe.

1 comments:

Jon Coutts said...

wow! i have never heard that reading of babel before. it really makes sense, and connects well with a lot of the anti-empire, sociological and Trinitarian stuff of recent years.

i need to go back and read it again.

that's such a funny story about the guy in paris.