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

Polishing Up My Proverbs 16 Crown of Glory (Part III): A Ripe Old Age

I’m not a huge Lord of the Rings fan, but I read the books more than once when I was younger, and something that always sort of struck me was Tolkien’s tendency to wax poetical about the age of things.  The Forest of Fangorn, for instance, owes its great power and mystery to its extreme age.  The Old Forest in the Shire, too, is ominous especially because it is an old forest.  The enigmatic and much-loved character Tom Bombadil, for all his youthful mirth and frivolity, is of immeasurable age (his elven name is Iarwain Ben-adar, the Oldest and Fatherless).  Even the One Ring itself owes something of its power to its great age. 

In Middle Earth, ancient things are powerful, magical, ominous and revered, and powerful things, magical things, ominous things are, especially, old.

Okay, maybe I’m more a fan than I care to admit.

But the reason I’m pointing all this out is because, in its deep respect, even awe, for all things ancient, the world of Middle Earth is, I think, very much like the world of the Bible, and very unlike our own world; and seeing how this theme plays out in a work of mythic fiction may help us hear something important that the Bible is trying to say about the theology of aging. 

The word that best captures what I’m trying to get at here is itself an old fashioned word (sorry): the word is, venerable.  According to Google, the word “venerable” means “accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom or character.”  Whatever else the Bible has to say about growing and/or being old, it recognizes, and asks us to recognize, that there is something venerable about great age.

Like I say, “venerable“ is not an adjective we use that much anymore.  At least, it’s not the first word that jumps to mind for me when I think of “old age.”  In the Scriptures, old age tends to give things (be they people, objects, teachings or ideas) a certain degree of credibility, authority and weight; old age tries, tests and proves things true.  In our world, by contrast, it’s not old age but youth, novelty, originality that has credibility and authority.  The long line-ups to get the latest iphone is not hard data, of course, nor is the dismissive tone we use when we call something “old-fashioned,” but they are, I think, subtle markers of this cultural difference.  Where the authors of the Bible tend to give special credence to old-ness, in particular, we tend to give it, especially, to new-ness.

This helps us to make sense of one of those parts of the Bible that often leaves people scratching their heads: the table of ages in Genesis 5.  If you’re unfamiliar with the passage, let me explain.  Genesis 5 contains a long, carefully structured genealogy of Adam’s descendants, from Seth to Noah, and what stands out as especially curious to modern readers is how old everyone on the list was.  Supernaturally old, you might almost say.  Methuselah, the oldest, lived to the ripe old age of 969; and Lamech, the youngest on the list, lived to a meager 777.

Without getting mired in circular debates about the historicity of these figures or the biological likelihood that anyone really lived 969 years (I’ll leave those posts to bloggers who know more than I), let me just point this out:  there are exactly 10 generations in the list, and the last one, Lamech, lived exactly 777 years (that is 7 (the number of completeness) times 111 (the sum of whose digits is 3)).  This suggests to me that there is something very symbolic going on in this genealogy. 

What we are seeing here, among other things, is a tribute to human venerability, the Creator’s original intention that human beings should live to a ripe old age, and that in their great age, they should grow wise and knowing and experienced and, for lack of a better word, venerable.  Of course, the “great age” that the author of Genesis has in mind was, in fact, eternally old—we were meant, originally, not to die at all (which is why He planted the Tree of Life in the Garden (Genesis 2:9), and it’s only after the Fall that humans are prevent from eating of it (3:22)).  This is a pretty standard reading of Genesis 1-3, but what’s seldom mentioned in discussions of eternal life, Edenic or otherwise, is that Biblically, in some sense or other, it would have meant, also, eternal aging.

The fact that eternal aging seems almost a monstrous fate to us is probably more evidence that we don’t really share the Bible’s perspective on old age in the first place.  We have come to see it, especially, as a kind of loss; the authors of the Bible tended to see it as a kind of gain: age expands our heart and layers our wisdom and enriches our character and, especially, deepens our experience of God; and if life was meant to be eternal, then there was not meant to be, originally, any end to the expansion of the human heart or the layering of human wisdom or the wealth of human character, or, especially the depth of our life in Him.

If I’m on to something here, then it’s worth noting that as we get further and further away from the “ground-zero” of the Creation Event in Genesis 1, we see human life-spans contracting rapidly.    Noah lives 950 years, his son Shem 500, and his great-great-great-grandson Abraham died at the still-ripe old age of  175.  As Eden shrinks into the distant past, it seems, our potential to reach a venerable old age diminishes, too.  Eventually it’ll settle on the infamous Three Score and Ten (Psalm 90:10).

But it’s also worth noting that among Christ’s many titles and attributes is this one:  he is, according to the prophet Daniel, “The Ancient of Days” (Dan 7:9), the Truly Venerable One who existed before time began, who is now and ever will be.  From a biblical point of view, this is, in fact, one of his claims to authority, that he is both Ageless and Ancient.

Like any true theology, a theology of aging must start here, with Him; and when we do, what we find is the thought that, in restoring to us the eternal life we lost with Eden, he restores to us, also, our potential to become truly venerable in our old age.

<< back   -   next >>

0 comments: