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

On Scripture and the Storied Self

I discovered the power of narrative therapy as an approach to biblical counseling early on in my studies. SOme of my fellow students were pretty suspicious of the whole enterprise. They read narrative therapists say things like, "people aren't the problem, the problem is the problem," or "there are no un-storied truths," and so on, and they got their absolute-truth guard up. Personally, I found some pretty intuitive intersections between the biblical narrative of salvation and atonement, and the narrative therapy idea that the story we tell about ourselves, embedded in community, defines our "selves" in a very real way.

Thinking about this today, I found this little nick-nack in my OCE shoe-box of memories, a reflection I wrote on narrative therapy and the Bible:

“Selves are socially constructed through language and maintained in narrative” says Freeman and Combs. It’s a very post-modern kind of statement, and of course there are all kinds of assumptions and ideas underneath it, some of them amicable to Christianity, some decidedly not, but it got me musing. Could identity, and self-knowledge actually be a social construct developed through language and maintained in narrative?
Because here a vista opens up. In the beginning was the Word, says John. The word—the logos—the spoken word of God—was with God and was God in the beginning. And God created humans in his own image, says the author of Genesis. In the image of God created he him; male and female, created he them. But the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And he—the word made flesh—language become touchable, we might say —is the image of the invisible God. As the writer to the Hebrews says, it used to be God’s words came through the prophets, now he has spoken in his Son. And like he goes on to say, this word from God is the likeness of God—“the exact imprint of his nature.” And here’s where it kinda clicked for me: if Jesus is the image of God, and if humans are made in the image of God, then it is in Jesus that our humanity, corporate and individual, our selves, are made, defined, socially constructed. And if our selves are made, defined, socially constructed in Jesus, the Word made flesh, then they truly are “constructed through language” in the most deep and profound way. So maybe the post-modern notion of “self” as a socio-linguistic construct is actually just grasping around the edges of what is actually a much deeper and profound biblical reality.

What does that all mean? I’m not sure yet, but at the very least I know it means that for me to know myself—to know what it means to be human and who I am as I relate to God and to those around me—I need to know Jesus. For me to find a language and narrative whereby I can truly and fully construct a “self,” I need to look daily and earnestly in faith and hope and love to the Word of God made flesh: Jesus. For only he speaks Gods grace and faithfulness and truth to me, and only he reveals to me my story, taking it up and fulfilling it in himself as the true image of God.
If you're curious about how I would see these ideas intersecting with preaching and evangelism, you can click here to listen to a sermon I preached recently at a Remembrance Day service at our church.

1 comments:

Jon Coutts said...

i like it.

man i'd love to be a fly on the wall at your OCE.

i sort of hope they give you a hard time, just because then the conversation would really sparkle!!! you'll do well either way.