cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
Red Tent Living is a community of women from across the world reading, writing, reflecting, and responding to one another daily as we reframe what it means to be feminine. We welcome you to join in the conversation and submit your own work!
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Purpose: Once a month gatherings for 6-8 women that include enjoying a meal together and taking time to share pieces of their lives with one another. It is a place where believers and non believers in Jesus can experience community as they find connection in unexpected ways with one another.
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The playground was filled with big third graders. I missed being on the first-grade playground where I felt safe. Second graders had been moved to the main Tremont School campus and recess was now an uncertain time where older third graders roamed. I ran to the swing set and Sally yelled at me to “wait…
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In honor of the tenth anniversary of Red Tent Living, we are featuring a monthly legacy post written by one of our regular contributors from the past decade. Mary Jane Hamilton is one of our original matriarchs; with us from the inception of Red Tent Living, she has helped shape this space with her wisdom,…
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Forever love is a steady kind of change. That’s what I think as I peer over top of the forest in our backyard and see the sun rising in precisely the same way as a year ago—bright and joyous. Already, the leaves are bright shades of orange, cardinal, maroon, and goldenrod. With a series of…
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For the month of November the women of Red Tent Living will be considering the theme, Second Wind. We invite you join us by reading the featured essays and poems, and we encourage you to consider hosting a few women from your own circle around a table to share stories provoked by this theme. See…
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“When you get here, just come on in. The front door is unlocked,” the text message reads. I park in the circular driveway behind the last in a row of cars. Pausing, I take a deep breath before emerging into the cool fall air. As I climb the few stairs leading to the front porch,…
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A scene, A scent, A song, Suddenly a knock on the door. Quiet at first and then louder. I want to ignore it. I try to ignore it, picking up my pace, turning up the volume.
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This is not a eulogy. This is a wild ce-le-bra-tion. Lived out in staccato, fast breaths and clapped hands. This is a reverie of light that actively stomped the darkness. She was a determined, defiant dance. This is ce-le-bra-tion. She was coffee and cocoa-bean, sugar cane and deep earth. Caribbean and cradle of civilization. She was…
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“There will be a procedure. They are checking out what is going on in his lungs,” she mentions one rainy April evening. My shoe heels click as we walk down the sterile, grey halls of the big city hospital. Someone makes a joke to try to ease the tension we feel in our bodies. My…
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I’m a Boomer. In my childhood home, our telephone hung on the kitchen wall, and every time it rang, shouts of “I’ve got it!” resounded throughout the house as my brothers and I raced from every direction to get there first. Competition often provided the tension that held us close to one another: who got…
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I kept staring at the door—the half-open door. I didn’t want it to be closed. I already felt violated enough and wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being shut in a room, alone with this man. I didn’t want it to be open. I didn’t want anyone to hear my answers to his pointed questions.…
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