<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
  xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <channel>
    <title>Santa Post — Essays</title>
    <link>https://santapost.org/essays/</link>
    <description>Personal and critical essays about faith, doubt, grief, ritual and inheritance, written at length by people willing to leave the questions genuinely open.</description>
    <language>en-US</language>
    <lastBuildDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2026 01:09:47 GMT</lastBuildDate>
    <atom:link href="https://santapost.org/essays/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
    <category>Essays</category>
    <item>
      <title>The Scroll That Closed a Thousand-Year Gap</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/the-scroll-that-closed-a-thousand-year-gap/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/the-scroll-that-closed-a-thousand-year-gap/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[The Great Isaiah Scroll, found in a Qumran cave in 1947, let readers hold a Hebrew Bible text a millennium older than any known before it — and trace, jar to vault, how that survival was verified.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:49:45 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Kara Williams</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/folder-import/72/72c1a22f977b80f77c1374bbb0ce89fba0209909034ae45745ee6018dd04cf06.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>What We Mean by Spiritual Reading</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/what-we-mean-by-spiritual-reading/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/what-we-mean-by-spiritual-reading/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[Spiritual reading is lectio divina — Guigo II’s four rungs of reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation — slow, receptive, unlike study or self-help.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 01 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Javier Hughes</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/heroes/2246b2077644fe596fe958285e4f77ae56804d7e68aef80b8149335a2e990007/1200w.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>The Bible in the Drawer</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/the-bible-in-the-drawer/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/the-bible-in-the-drawer/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[Gideons International began placing Bibles in hotel rooms in 1908; by its own count two billion copies — the bedside drawer as the quietest library.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Javier Hughes</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/heroes/23a6c3227fb98c962042cf83b811f9f6c2ce47f3642688bd8766ccef126a6f7f/1200w.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Other People’s Margins</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/other-peoples-margins/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/other-peoples-margins/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[Marginalia — glosses, colophons, inscriptions, pencil — are the second text of used religious books: the record of who read them, and where the need was.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Amara Okonkwo</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/heroes/8331bd43c6fb5df749ee0ebb651a642b8ce46d1aa3f97cb42c1dd7278e2cd694/1200w.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Bonhoeffer: Letters and Papers from Prison</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/bonhoeffer-letters-from-prison/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/bonhoeffer-letters-from-prison/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison carries his Tegel letters — religionless Christianity, the suffering God — written 1943–45, before execution.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Oliver Grant</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/heroes/407be33ae2dedc9dfdc2baa9a3fde6ab13fc895a27a994ca6a5eb665395f0111/1200w.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Kathleen Norris: The Cloister Walk</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/kathleen-norris-cloister-walk/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/kathleen-norris-cloister-walk/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[The Cloister Walk (1996) follows poet Kathleen Norris into the Benedictine hours, where psalms said daily for years re-taught a Protestant how to read.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Oliver Grant</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/heroes/8c68e101376d10e02b1b11efa5c099afb88211f67f9faf86f88bc41675eb9d31/1200w.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Dag Hammarskjöld: Markings</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/hammarskjold-markings/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/hammarskjold-markings/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[Markings is Dag Hammarskjöld’s posthumous diary of negotiations with himself and with God — thirty-six years of entries, ending before the Ndola crash.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Amara Okonkwo</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/heroes/2259c64c1e4ef37cd1f5f9eba8da0b63cf29635560ea45e4063042882d141077/1200w.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Flannery O’Connor: A Prayer Journal</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/flannery-o-connor-prayer-journal/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/flannery-o-connor-prayer-journal/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[A Prayer Journal collects Flannery O’Connor’s 1946–47 Iowa prayers for talent and protection from vanity — the theology before the fiction.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Kara Williams</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/heroes/47a8374973d025b7d47b45972bfe4509661b541ea338f8e22a6b18e01994cd21/1200w.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/julian-of-norwich-revelations/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/julian-of-norwich-revelations/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[Revelations of Divine Love, shown to Julian of Norwich in 1373, is the earliest surviving English book by a woman — sixteen visions and one hazelnut.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Kara Williams</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/heroes/ad7b80207266aaf30c43bb034ade756146f69778252753733b069ee145989eab/1200w.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed</title>
      <link>https://santapost.org/essays/c-s-lewis-a-grief-observed/</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://santapost.org/essays/c-s-lewis-a-grief-observed/</guid>
      <description><![CDATA[A Grief Observed began as four notebooks C. S. Lewis kept after Joy Davidman’s death in 1960 — grief pricing the faith his earlier books explained.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 08 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:creator>Javier Hughes</dc:creator>
      <category>Essays</category>
      <enclosure url="https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/vuga/articles/heroes/24cce0262763e43f623e32ef430e1820381a6a081ae2a96656c059a915f6ef2a/1200w.webp" type="image/jpeg" length="0" />
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>