Seeds of War

Paulette Meier set brief excerpts from Quakers during the 17th and 18th century to music in the style of Gregorian chant or modern Taizé chant. Paulette has recorded these chants on two albums: "Timeless Quaker Wisdom in Plainsong" and "Wellsprings of Life: Quaker Wisdom in Chant". 

John Woolman (1720-1772) was a Quaker traveling minister. He is often consider a Quaker prophet because of his deep opposition to slavery and his extraordinarily modern insights into the connections between what we would call "overconsumption" with war, slavery, environmental damage, and the suffering of poor people, workers, and animals. 

Here is a link to the quotation that Paulette used for this song. It comes from Chapter 10 of an essay called A Plea for the Poor - which was published posthumously in 1791, but was believed to have been written in 1763-4.