I am an economist, an analytical person, a scholar, a person who studies and teaches about the ways we use our resources to meet our needs. But at the core of my being I identify as something else. Deep inside I am a mystic, a religious person, perhaps even something of a monk, a person for whom the life of the spirit is the most real part of life.

We seldom encounter the words mystic and economist in the same sentence, chapter, or even book. The worldly and otherworldly do not easily or naturally coalesce. Yet holding these two dimensions in creative tension with each other is the work to which I am drawn and I believe, is important work for all of us trying to make sense of our daily lives and to build a better society. The transcendent gives meaning and purpose to the ordinary business of our lives, and that ordinary, flesh-and-bones daily living in the material world is the vessel that gives our spirits a home….

In this essay I share some reflections on bringing a moral vision to economic life. This is rarely the stuff of formal economics, a discipline that sees itself largely as something apart and separate from morality and religion…. We currently confront an economy that, while serving some of us quite well, harms and even destroys others. We encounter repeated financial crises, growing threats to the environment, and unconscionable extremes of poverty and wealth. If we are to structure an economic system that not only works, but works for the benefit of all, and if we are to meet human needs without ruining the planet and all of life, we must recover a sense of moral vision in economic affairs.

–Tom Head in Pendle Hill Pamphlet 405: Envisioning a Moral Economy