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

Three Minute Theology 1.8: I Live God


When our daughter was in kindergarten, she brought home a painting she’d done one day and proudly showed it off.  A bright red flower garden with a single rose towering over all the rest, and next to that she’d printed:  “I Live God.”

“Look,” she said, “It says, ’I love God!’” 

It was only an accidental misspelling, but we’ve always felt there was something profound about that mistaken letter “i,” and to this day it hangs on our wall as a reminder that loving God is, in fact, the essence of life.

Our daughter wasn’t intentionally doing theology that day, of course, but her painting is a helpful “way-in” for thinking about the unique work of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

One of the ancient creeds calls the Holy Spirit, “The Lord and giver of life”; but the very same creed says that Jesus is Lord, and that the Father is the Maker of Heaven and Earth, so in what way should we understand the Holy Spirit as both the Lord and the Giver of life?

Well: just like my daughter’s painting created an interesting (though unintentional) play on words, there is a fascinating play-on-words in the Bible that helps us get to the heart of what’s going on here.

Because in the original languages of the Bible, the word for “Spirit” is the same as the word for “wind,” and the word for “breath.”  In Hebrew the words are either ruach or neshawmaw', and they can mean spirit, or wind, or breath, depending on the context.

Like in the Creation story. It says that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and then it says that, before anything came into existence, God’s Spirit—his ruach—was hovering over the water. And so the creation began.

Later on in the Noah’s Ark story, after water has swept away all life from the earth and God wants to re-create everything, fresh and new, it says, he sent a wind—his ruach—over the water.

The point is, whenever God Creates, he does it by sending his ruach—his Spirit.

But there are even deeper layers here.  Because in the same creation story, it explains how God created the first human, and it says that God breathed into him the breath of life—his neshawmaw’—and he became a living being. 

Humans, of course, need to breathe-- without neshawmaw’, we’d die—but it’s not just our breathing that keeps us alive.  It’s actually the very breath of God, his divine Spirit.

Like it says in the Book of Job:  as long as breath—my neshawmaw’—is in me, the Ruach of God—his Spirit—is in my nostrils.  And:  “The Spirit of God (his ruach) has made me, and the breath of the Almighty (his neshawmaw’) has given me life. 

And not just humans; in one place it’s talking about all the living things in creation, and it says, “When God takes away their breath—their ruach—they die; but when he sends his Spirit, they spring to life.”

It turns out our daughter was painting truer than she knew, because anything that’s alive and breathing, if it is alive and breathing, it’s only because the Spirit breathed life into it. 

In that one sense, we all sort of “live God,” with every breath we take. 

Of course, there’s breathing and then there’s being alive; and there’s more to being alive than simply taking breaths. 
                                                                                               
So maybe that’s why Jesus, much later, explained that it wasn’t enough for us to be alive just in the “physical breath” sense of the word; we needed to be brought to life spiritually, too; we have to be born of the Spirit, is how he said it. 

And he was talking about the way the Holy Spirit brings us alive to the love of God, and opens our spirits to the Story of Jesus, and brings us into a life-giving relationship with him. 

Because when God breathes into us like that, that’s when we discover he’s the Lord and Giver of Life, in every sense of the word.

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