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 2.4: Getting the Bible All Squared Away



Is it okay for Christians to do yoga?  Is there a right or wrong way to pray?  What about drinking alcohol?  Or getting tattoos?

While these questions may seem somewhat random, they are the kind of down-to-earth questions that Christians face all the time as they try to follow Jesus in the real world.

Now: any Christian worth his or her salt would agree that the answers to questions like these must be found in the Bible, which is the final authority on what we must believe and how we must live.

The only problem is, it’s seldom so easy as simply saying, “For the Bible tells me so.”  Sometimes the Bible may not address the question directly.  It was written 2000 years ago, after all, so it doesn’t directly address modern ethical questions like invetro-fertilization, let’s say, or the place an ipod ought to have in our lives.

Even when the Bible does directly address an issue, its teaching still needs to be interpreted by flesh-and-blood humans like us.  And, as the 2000 year history of the Church has demonstrated, often very well-meaning Christians can arrive at very different interpretations of the same passages.

An eighteenth century theologian named John Wesley recognized this challenge.  In his writings, he tended to emphasize three things alongside the Bible—tradition, experience, and reason—which help us interpret the Word of God and apply it to our lives.

Wesley was the founder of a Christian movement called “Methodism.”  Following his example, Methodists often refer to the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” as a framework for tackling the tough Faith Questions.

As the name suggests, the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” has four corners, four “sources of knowing” that we use in arriving at answers for how we should live and what we should believe.  Again, these are:  The Bible—what does God’s Word say on the matter; Christian tradition—how have Bible-believing Christians consistently answered this question?  Reason—what answer does logic and evidence point to? And experience—what “rings true” for us based on our experience in the real world?

Most Christians intuitively use tradition, reason and experience together when interpreting the Bible without even realizing they’re doing it.  The Wesleyan Quadrilateral just tries to make this more consistent and transparent as an approach to the Bible.  If we come across a teaching that looks good on the surface but radically re-writes 2000 years of Christian tradition, let’s say, or is jarringly out of synch with our experience of God or the world, or is just plain irrational, then it doesn’t pass the smell test.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is a helpful concept, but it’s important to remember that this is not a simple symmetrical square.  The Bible is always the first and ultimate authority, and tradition, experience and reason are always secondary sources.  This quadrilateral, in other words, is decidedly lopsided.

Think about it like a three-legged stool.  The seat, obviously, is the most important part, but it needs legs if you’re gonna sit on it.  At the same time, the stool’s only stable if all three legs are in place.  None of the legs, on its own, can hold up the seat.  In this analogy, the Bible is the seat on which we rest, and the legs are tradition, reason and experience, which all need to be in place for us to arrive at a solid interpretation.

Perhaps an even better metaphor is found in a pair of glasses.  For a Christian, the Bible is the lens through which we view the world; but we can’t wear the lenses unless they’re set in frames, resting securely on our noses and held in place by our ears.  In this analogy, the lenses are the Scriptures, the frames that hold them in place is tradition, the nose represents our reason and the ears represent our experience. 


And when the lenses we’re looking through are fitted to their frames, held in place by our reason and supported by our experience, that’s when we’ll really see what we mean when we say, “for the Bible tells me so.”

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