The Arrow's Path

The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleuia.

That the dead might know salvation, who in limbo long had dwelt,  into Hell with love he entered; to him yield the broken gates, as the bolts and massive hinges fall asunder at his word. Now the door of ready entrance, but forbidding all return, Outward swings as bars are loosened and sends forth the prisoned souls, by reversal of the mandate, reading its threshold once more.  But while God with the golden splendour lighted up the halls of Death,  while he shed the dawn's refulgence on the startled shades of night,  radiant stars grew pale with sorrow in the lurid ashen sky, And the sun took flight from heaven, clad in dusky mourning robes,  left behind his fiery chariot, hid himself in anxious grief, For a while salvation's Leader gave himself to realms of Death,  that he might the dead, long buried, guide in their return to light, when the chains that had been welded by that primal sin were loosed.  Then, in steps of their Creator, m...

Again, I profusely apologize for my failure to do more with my Islam and Christianity series during Lent. I have been bogged down in other things, and this has been put on the back burner. I have a lot of blog entries in my head, but sadly, they continue to stay there. One of the main points that I wanted to make in this series on a topic that I think Islam gets right and Christianity, at least in the Western modern form, has completely and/or conveniently forgotten is the idea of social justice and usury. In fact, usury in Western society has become so accepted as "business is business" that to look at newer definitions of the term in a secular dictionary, usury is defined as "the illegal action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest ( source here )." Notice how the definition is couched in terms of "unreasonably high" interest. If one goes back a few centuries and looks at definitions of the term before modern finance, on...