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

Happy Birthday Mr. Van Gogh

Speaking of birthdays, today happens to be Vincent Van Gogh's 155th birthday. Though he died in heart-breaking obscurity and depression, the inner light and darkness that radiates from his best work suggests a deeply spiritual way of seeing the world. In honor of his birthday today, I offer these few interesting notes about Vincent Van Gogh:

1. Van Gogh was profoundly discontent and unsuccessful in his formal artistic training, and he butted with many heads as he struggled to escape the "flat, insipid" results of the Academy's formalized, systematic method. Here's an excerpt from a letter he wrote to his brother Theodore:

I must tell you that even though I continue to attend, the pedantry of those fellows at the [Arts] Academy is often quite unbearable and they seem hateful to me at times. But I try very hard to avoid arguments with them and go my own way. I feel like I am getting closer to what I am looking for [in my art] and perhaps I will find it sooner if I can do what I want to do when I draw those plaster reproductions. ... You can’t imagine how flat, insipid and lifeless the results of [their] system are; I must say that I am content to have seen the thing up close. ... I have wanted to say twenty five times, “Your outline is a trick.” But it doesn’t seem worth fighting about. And yet even when I keep silent, they irritate me and I irritate them.

2. I've heard some speculation that Vincent Van Gogh may have had a visual disorder that affected the way he perceived and processed light, making yellow light especially glaring to his eyes. This would account for the unusually vivid, sometimes ugly use of yellow in his work. (Some have speculated similarly that his vision was affected by the use of digitalis, a drug prescribed for epilepsy, though there is little evidence he ever took the drug.)

3. I often think about Vincent Van Gogh when I reflect on what it means to be a pastor-as-artist, or an artist-as-pastor. It's not well known, but before embarking on his career as a painter, Vincent Van Gogh studied for the ministry, and sought (unsuccessfully) to be a pastor. I guess this kind of biographical detail gets overshadowed when you cut off your ear. I've heard it said that he failed at his studies because he took Jesus' teaching too close to heart and "sold all he had to give to the poor." His instructors felt he was too "radical." But when I think about the deeply spiritual response his work has often evoked in people over the last century and a half, I wonder: maybe, by asking people to look through the surface of things for the light behind, maybe he ministered to more people than he would have as a Methodist preacher.

Don McLean put it well: "Starry, starry night, paint your palette blue and grey, / Look out on a summer's day, with eyes that know the darkness of my soul."

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