The Shadow – Wisdom Chant

The field of wheat within is sown with weeds!
By night, awake to seek the cause,
I saw my enemy; my enemy was I.

Listen

Hearing the parable of the wheat and weeds (Mt. 13 v24 – 30) read aloud one bright spring morning I was struck by the dualistic nature of the interpretation provided (Mt. 13 v37 – 43). It seemed to leave the door open for those who self-identify as wheat to scrutinize everyone else and categorise them as weeds, leading to division in the community rather than unity. What, I wondered, might a contemplative take on the story look like? What if the field represented not the world but the inner life of the individual?

It took only a brief internet search to establish that this was not an original idea: the Cappadocian Fathers had beaten me to it by nearly two millenia. They saw the field as representing the human heart; the good seed symbolises the impulses of the heart which lead to virtue while the bad represents the misjudgement and delusion that lead to errant behaviour. In Jungian terms the weeds represent our shadow side, the part that we fear, deny, and project onto others. The shadow cannot be rejected but must be recognised and integrated just as the weeds must grow alongside the wheat until harvest time.

This chant is an attempt to express the inner turmoil experienced when the disciple encounters and confronts their shadow side. Hitherto, the weeds in the field, if recognised at all, have been blamed upon an ‘enemy’. The final phrase of the lyric can be interpreted in two ways: at the level of the false self, it can be read to mean that it is you who are subverting your own good intentions; alternatively, as a sense of the unity of all creation develops, it could be taken to mean that, where a second party is involved, you are one with that enemy. Look closely at the text, however, and you will see that, whichever way you read it, the result is pretty much the same.

Enjoy the dissonances in the music. You may not have the resources in a small group to cover all the notes in bar 3. If you have five voices simply leave out the F on beat 2 of the alto part; if only four voices the best compromise is to drop the E-natural, F and C-sharp from the altos and move the tenors up a tone to C-sharp on beat 2.