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 Going to the Gym with God (Part 5): A Brief History of Muscular Christianity


In 1844, a London draper named George Williams was concerned by the influx of young men he saw moving to the city of London, looking for work at the height of the Industrial Revolution. There were not many healthy activities for these young men to spend their time on in those days, and many were turning to the taverns and brothels for entertainment. Williams wanted to provide a healthy, wholesome alternative, a place where young men could develop their “body, mind, and spirit” together. As a result—and as a concrete expression of his faith—he founded the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Today the YMCA is so closely associated with that catchy tune by the Village People that few realize it was actually founded on Christian principles, and grew out of Williams’s conviction that having a healthy body is just as important as having a healthy spirit for a thriving Christian life. 

Whether you share that conviction or not, its notable how quickly Williams’s idea caught on. It was part of a growing cultural trend that started in the mid-1850s known today as “Muscular Christianity.”  Muscular Christianity marked a move away from the asceticism that characterized the traditional Christian view of the body, the idea that the flesh was a distraction from the things of God and ought to be denied or suppressed. Proponents of muscular Christianity argued instead that a physically fit body could be an expression of one’s faith in God.

Thomas Hughes, one of the early advocates of muscular Christianity, argued that:

The Muscular Christians have hold of the old chivalrous and Christian belief, that a man's body is given to him to be trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes, and the subduing of the earth which God has given to the children of men. 

There’s a lot in there to make a woke Christian of the 21st Century cringe, I suppose. The idea of “subduing the earth,” though biblical, needs a lot more nuance than Thomas gives it there; and the sentence simply smacks of machoism and sexism though out.  That said, the core tenet—that our bodies are not shameful “prison-houses” for the soul, but are in fact gifts of God which we need in order to serve him—has at least a glimmer of truth to it. Perhaps even a full ray of light.

Whatever the case, the idea grew pretty rapidly through the early decades of the 20th Century. Other clergy men started following Williams’s lead and built gymnasiums and boxing rings in the basements of their churches. Meanwhile the YMCA itself started planting chapters all over the world.

In America, Muscular Christianity would find its way into the preaching of evangelists like D. L. Moody (ca. 1850-90) and others. President Roosevelt (ca. 1909)—who held that “there is only a very circumscribed sphere of usefulness for the timid good man”—was also a strong proponent of the concept. Even today we see the vestiges of the movement in the work of organizations like Athletes in Action (founded 1966) and the Promise Keepers (founded 1990).

I suppose any “theology of exercise,” like the one I’ve been trying to assemble in this blog series, will have to wrestle with the tenets of the “muscular Christianity movement,” at one point or another. Though it's over 150 years old now, its influence still lingers in the church, both for the good and the bad.  It’s there whenever a well-meaning but misinformed preacher decries the so-called “feminization of the church” (which, to be clear, I find to be a deeply offensive term).  It’s there in the worst of “men’s ministries,” that make “being a Christian guy” all about a narrowly-defined set of supposedly “masculine” interests, tastes, roles and abilities (which, again to be clear, I often find offensive). It’s there in the worst of the theology coming out of neo-conservative organizations like “The Counsel of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” (which I also find offensive, on the whole).

Because here’s the thing: men come in all shapes and sizes, with all kinds of interests, predilections,  aptitudes and body-types. When I was growing up, I often felt like I did not fit in among the other “Christian guys” in church, because I had so little interest in the traditional “guy things” that advocates for muscular Christianity seem to want to use as their litmus test. I was artistic, not athletic, into books not body-building, played music not hockey. 

Any version of Christianity, muscular or otherwise, that makes its definition of “a Christian man” so narrow that only a handful of guys really fit the bill and the rest are left wondering where they belong, is not Christianity at all, in my view.  

That said, in the ten years since I first started going to the Y—an organization, remember, that began as an expression of one man’s Christian faith—I have found that my spirit has grown healthier, on the whole, along with my body. 

I have learned how to push myself spiritually to do things I’m not naturally inclined to do, by pushing myself physically to do exercises I'm not inclined to do. I’ve discovered that the limits of what my physical body is capable of are often far higher than I ever assumed before I started pushing them. This, in turn, has inspired me to explore the spiritual limits of what I might attempt for God in other areas of my life, too.

These things are also part of the legacy of the muscular Christianity movement, I think, and it's one of the reasons why, even though as a young man and growing up, athleticism was the last thing I ever felt any interest in, these days I very much look forward to my trip to the gym, or my hour on the squash court, or my 20 minute exercise routine in the basement of our home (which is all I can manage in these days of pandemic).

Because when I put my body to work like that, I find, among other things, my spirit is being stretched and grown in ways I never could have imagined.

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