March/April 2004

An interview with David and Lila Tresemer

by Ravi Dykema

 When David Tresemer, a Harvard graduate raised in a world of private schools and privileges, first came to Boulder, it was part of a spiritual journey that had taken him from a PhD program in psychology to a rural farming community in Vermont, growing organic vegetables and delivering baby animals.
      "When I first received my degree, I realized I had just been awarded a certification of expertise in an area whose true foundations I didn't understand," Tresemer says. "That sent me for a dizzying ride of self-inquiry."

      His pilgrimage culminated 13 years later in the building of the Star House and All Seasons Chalice, a multi-faith, nature-based church that celebrates the seasons and lunar cycles with an eclectic blend of ancient rituals, indigenous wisdom and modern practices. Situated on 35 spectacular acres in Boulder's foothills, the church is surrounded by a tight-knit spiritual community that grows organic herbs and meets for regular prayer and meditation. Here, Tresemer and his wife, Lila Sophia, talk to Ravi Dykema about Darwinism, myth-based theatre and celebrating life through the seasons.

RD: How did you go from receiving a PhD in psychology from Harvard to starting a church?

DT: Once I received my degree, I said, "Wait a minute: psychology. Psyche logos. What is psyche and what is logos? What are these characters that I am a doctor of?" Russell Lockhart, a Jungian psychologist, said, "Psychology is soul speech: the word (logos) of the soul (psyche)." I realized that none of the psychologists in the department could tell me what "psyche logos" really meant. A long series of events followed that realization, and I ended up as a farmer in Green River, Vermont, finding psyche through a primary experience of nature.

RD: So it was a mystical quest of sorts that made you a farmer?

DT: Absolutely. It was not a career path that most people understood. But I am so happy I made that decision, because I could have ended up as an assistant professor talking about stuff I didn't know about. I was in my retreat in Vermont from 1974 to 1986. In 1985, I came to Boulder at the invitation of Jose Arguelles, the creator of Harmonic Convergence, a worldwide event in 1987, and the Mayan calendar studies. He invited me to a Gaia Synthesis conference in Boulder. I was so star-struck by what Boulder had to offer that the fifth day I was here, I bought a house.
 
RD: How did you have the money to buy the land in Boulder's foothills and build the Star House?

DT: My mother passed away when I was 36 years old, and I inherited money through her. I was quite interested in what they call "socially responsible investing," and my socially responsible investments turned out to practically responsible as well. I have felt, from the very beginning, a sense of responsibility to use resources wisely. Now my accountant tells me that I'm using them unwisely, but that's in comparison to how most people who have resources handle them. I've found that to be unsatisfactory- I think that if there's a resource there, it's there to be used, and it's always been our impulse to use it in ways that benefit many.
 
RD: Typically, people who have what a lot of folks consider a fortune, would buy a large property to build a giant house and isolate themselves from neighbors. They might give to their church, but you did something very different with your property.

DT: Yes, instead of giving to a church, we started one!

RD: Lila Sophia, how did you end up in merging your life with David's at Star House?

LT: I first came to Boulder from Chicago in 1969 to go to college, and I ended up becoming a co-founder of the Community Free School, an adult education program. So I was involved in the early birthing of what Boulder has always had at its core: a lot of diversity, a lot of spiritual wisdom from different cultures and traditions. I left Boulder in 1974 and moved to California, where I did a lot of multi-media work.

RD: So while David was doing a mystical journey on a farm...

LT: ...I was doing LA. Which I don't regret. I came back to Colorado, to Aspen in 1990 and ended up meeting John Steiner and Margo King. Through them, I got involved in working with the Avatar Institute, and we did the Avatar trainings in Boulder for five or six years. And I knew that Margo was going to introduce me to my future husband.

RD: That was sort of a premonition?

LT: Yes, and she surely did. I had a very short list of what I wanted in my mate and partner- I wanted him to be interested in multi-media and to have a really deep spiritual path. And there he was.

RD: David, how did you come to buy the property at Star House?

DT: Boulder seemed like urban life to me after Vermont. I felt the need to have a place in nature, so I started looking in an hour and a half travel radius from Boulder. The search took me way out to Rollinsville and all sorts of places, but I kept coming back to the land where Star House is now- it just kept calling me back. The land had been subdivided into seven parcels, and we bought them all. That was in 1987.
      A group of people came together to design and build Star House, including Phil Tabb, a wonderful architect in Boulder, and Robert Armon in Denver. There were Platonists- now, a Platonist architect is a wonderful thing. Their approach was, "Star House already exists; it is our job to bring it from the unseen realm into the seen realm." They didn't say, "Oh, this is a great opportunity for me to show off my architectural fantasies." They were very much in service to what the vision was. Then we had a team of primarily five people building the place. From the very beginning, we had a pact that the end does not justify the means, that the means, the process of building, had to be as potent as what we ended up with.
      During the process, we said prayers. We actually sang to every board and nail and piece of equipment that went into that building. Singing to all these material pieces is becoming very aware of them.

RD: It sounds sort of like the way a temple in the Buddhist or Hindu tradition might be built, with a lot of care taken to include deeper awareness.

DT: Yes. And from the very beginning we were committed to being transdenominational. We chose from many traditions. That kind of eclecticism can be dangerous if it becomes muddy, but if you choose purely and carefully, then it actually can become a better meal. I think of it as the highest common denominator: What are the qualities that call us into a resonance and a kind of transpersonal way across different traditions? In a way that's really how Star House has continued to be held, as a transdenominational experience.
      We were led by a vision of what this place would look like. When you're led by a vision, you are often led a few steps of the way at a time, and you don't really see the end; if you did, most sane human beings would dig in their heals and say, "No." So we went slowly, step by step, and really saw the building- just what the angles should be, how all the things should connect together. It took a terrific amount of thought- it wasn't just handed over to an architect, who delivered some plans and that was that.
      We also had an agreement that the way in which the house was being constructed was key. Near the end, there was an argument about one of the aspects of construction, between two key people on the construction team, that seemed to be unsolvable. We worked it and worked it and worked it, but there was extreme tension and bad feelings, so we said, "Okay, shut it down." We actually stopped construction completely two weeks before the house was predicted to be complete. We felt it was a sign, that the timing wasn't right. So we sent everybody home, and the building sat there for 12 weeks. We worked with it quite a bit during that time, to purify and release and find out what was being stuck. At one point, it had the palpable feeling of being relieved and released, so we called everybody back, and we said, "We're ready to finish now. Are you still available?" And everyone was still available, which is a minor miracle in the construction trade. So they came back and completed the building in good spirits.

RD: Now, you formed a church, All Seasons Chalice, at Star House. Can you tell me how that came to be and what your vision is for it?

LT: Our original inspiration had been that the building was to be a place for meditation for small groups of people. We had a small esoteric group studying world spiritual traditions that met once a week, and our first thought was that the building was for our group. Then a man named Kevin Townly approached us and said, "You know, there's a person in Boulder, Timothy Dobson, who performs this wonderful service of Dances of Universal Peace. Come experience it." And that was love at first sight. It's a wonderful practice of dances, chants, songs from all spiritual traditions. It's brilliant. So just after we had opened in 1990, we brought in the first Dances of Universal Peace to be at the Star House, and they've been there ever since, meeting twice a month, open to the public.

RD: And that's unusual, too- that you've opened your "home," so to speak, to the public. Was that your original intention?

DT: Yes, in the sense of meditation and dance. It was a big step to say, "This is open to the public," but we didn't think of it as open to the public, because the Dances of Universal Peace was its own little community. So we said, "Oh, we'll invite this little community to join us." Then, by slow steps, it became more of a public event because we said, "Well, let's see if we should invite other people to our full moon meditations." Then word gets around, and all of a sudden you realize, "Oh, I guess we're being public."
      Then, at a certain point, we said, "Gosh. It appears that we're being a church here." That's really what a church is- it talks about the meaning of life. So we thought, "Well, we should probably say what we are, which is a church," and we began the process of working with the Internal Revenue Service to demonstrate that we are a church. Then we were incorporated as "All Seasons Chalice Church" in 1993.

RD: Did you have a congregation, or at least a germ of one?

DT: A germ of one, I think, would be more appropriate.  Shortly after that, we pulled together our board of directors and began the inquiry into the meaning and purpose of the temple and how to become relevant to the spiritual and social needs of a community as eclectic as Boulder. We still ask those questions. I think the most successful program there at the moment is "The Path of the Ceremonial Arts for Women." That's something Lila Sophia began four or five years ago. It's a three-year training for women, and it is brilliant.
      That's the kind of work that was intended when we brought other people into full moon ceremonies. Full moon ceremonies are powerful not one at a time, but in series. It's something that asks us to, through repetition, continue to build our spiritual personal resources, and make something stronger of ourselves, so that when those resources are needed in some kind of an emergency or crisis- it could be the crisis of everyday living, or it could be a greater crisis- when those resources are needed, they are available. 

RD: What I would encounter at a full moon ceremony?

DT: The plan right now is that there's a solar and lunar event- it's kind of how we organize the year, around new moons and full moons. A full moon would be mostly led by one of the nine ordained ministers of All Seasons Chalice. One of them would work with a seed thought for a meditation related to the moon and the month that the moon falls in. And there's a sketch of an outline that would include several things, but then the individual can create it according to their interest and inspiration.

RD: Could you give me an example of a seed thought?

DT: The first one that comes to mind is, "I build a lighted house, and therein dwell," which is a seed thought for the full moon of Cancer, related to building of home and creating a spirit within that space.
      The full moon falls in a certain astrological sign, so that's basically how we come up with some of the themes of each of the moons. The thing that every human being has in common are lunar cycles and solar cycles, the seasons of the earth, the fact that we live on the earth, and are most often inspired by the stars. So solar and lunar events, we figured, were really viable to organize around. It also gave us a rhythm that was different than an "every Sunday morning" congregation; instead, we have twice a month a full moon and a new moon, four times a year a solstice or an equinox.

RD: Some might hear pagan overtones in this structure.

DT: The word "pagan," and the word "peasant," have the same root as the word "peace." It means "connected to the earth," connected to what the needs of the earth are and the earth's rhythms. When you really understand the needs of the earth, you become peaceful, because then you're living in response to the earth. So "pagan" means "responsive to the earth." Now every religion is pagan, if you look at when their festivals are. Thai Buddhism is very closely connected with the moon rhythms. The Jewish calendar is connected with the moon rhythms. The placement of Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox, so that's sun and moon rhythms. So if you would call what we do "pagan," then you have to call what they do "pagan" too. Pagan has gotten, in some people's eyes, a bad name because of some of the strange things that people who call themselves "pagans" do. But that's true for anything- for Christians, for capitalists, for peacenicks, for any group of people. 

LT: If you looked at the background of both our board members and our ministers, we really represent what we're talking about. We had a Methodist minister who's been working within the peace movement since he was in his 20s, a high-level Sufi initiate who's a minister, a certified psychic who talks to angels, some Buddhist influence, as well as pagan and esoteric Christianity, David has quite a background in theosophy and anthroposophy as well. I feel like we've brought together traditions with a deep respect for their teachings and a determination to find that common stream of spirituality- I really feel if we don't understand that on a global level, we will never come to be a planet that can live in peace.

RD: Please tell me more about the full moon meditations.

DT: The solar meditations, like winter solstice and summer solstice, are more celebrations. The moon ones are much more contemplative. The hypothesis is that there are spiritual beings available during this alignment of sun, moon and earth, called the full moon or new moon. Our responsibility is to show up to test that hypothesis through our own experience. And we're going to do that through various kinds of activities, but there's always a meditation, a quiet time of introspection and contemplation, involved. That's the way we listen.

RD: What do you mean by "spiritual beings?"

DT: It's the experience that you would say is not "me," is something that is something greater than me, than my own worldly concerns. What do I experience that is greater than that? It might be visual, it might be auditory, it might be kinesthetic. Again, we invite people to honor what is sacred for them, so if "spiritual beings" works, great. If other people deal more with archetypes in the sense of aspects of their own psyches, great. We're trying our best not to go into a projection of what a spiritual reality is as much as inviting people to identify with their own experiences.

RD: Tell me about the women's ongoing workshop that you're doing, Lila.

LT: The new moon started out as a women's celebration of the beginning cycle of a new moon. After about a year or two, we realized there was so much interest within the women's community in Boulder that we put out one small flyer. Within a couple of weeks we had 35 to 40 women who had responded to the idea of an ongoing women's exploration of ceremonial arts. That was five years ago, and it has been an ongoing discovery of sisterhood, how to be women together, exploring what interests women.
      We keep it pretty broad in terms of the elements of ceremony and design, and allow women to also explore what's of interest to them. They can come in with a Native American interest or a Buddhist interest or a Christian interest. So we're not doing as much teaching as we are facilitating the space where they can learn and be inspired. But we have a good first-year program that's a little bit more structured in terms of the elements of ceremony and ritual design. The second year moves more into the experience of creating and facilitating ceremonies.
      The women of the PCA, the Path of Ceremonial Arts, are the ones who facilitate the new moon ceremonies. And they also have started something called "Journey of the Feminine," which becomes familiar with a different feminine archetype every month, so that's a different program facilitated by graduates of the Ceremonial Arts program. We also do rights of passage work, everything from celebrating weddings and baby blessings and rights of passage for teenagers, so it's really becoming a woman's wisdom culture. We occasionally invite David to come do a teaching module.

DT: They give me an hour every four months, and it permits me to observe the astonishing power of a group of women, how they have common concerns and can share their aspirations in a way that really isn't available in other aspects of the culture. The maturity, the growth that occurs, is stunning.

RD: How many people are involved in the group right now?

LT: I would say 35. And then there are the graduates, who are now coming back to help teach modules. It's very inspiring. We're also looking to get off the mountain more and do more service and work in the community. I think that will start happening even more this next year. We've already started going to some assisted living centers- there's a quilting project that we're starting in one of the Sunrise Community Homes.
      Graduates of the program are also developing the Ceremonies for Sacred Living. They've been working on it for about seven months, to create ceremonies that they can offer to the public, to acknowledge important passages in a person's life. Marriage is the one we know the best. So is a memorial service. But there are others. There are coming-of-age ceremonies, ceremonies for getting a new job or blessing a new house, which are known worldwide, and these women are going to be offering those to the public.
      Also, after four or five years of the program being specifically for women, the men's work has started to become stronger as well. My brother, David and other ministers are hosting men's new moon events; so now we're catering to both women's and men's spiritual work. In 1990, Star House was originally dedicated to sacred marriage, to this understanding of the union and communion that needs to happen between heaven and earth, between the divine feminine and the divine masculine, between sun and moon.

RD: I'd like to change course a bit and ask you about your playwriting and producing. I know it relates to all this, to what you've been working with at Star House.

LT: Yes, it does, very strongly. David and I both have a love of mythology, ceremony and ritual, and we come from very different backgrounds- me from Los Angeles and him from Harvard and a Vermont farming community. To describe the kind of ceremonial theatre we're doing, we landed on the phrase "modern mythic drama." David had been working at Star House with the twelve labors of Hercules- that had been his way of exploring myth through community theatre and involving people in the 12 labors according to the 12 astrological signs.
 
RD: How many plays have you written and produced?

LT: Altogether he and I worked on two Hercules plays that were produced in theatres, and then four plays of our own. We had just done a production at the Dairy Center for the Arts, "The Crazy Metal Birds." A friend of ours, who knew that the Nomad Theatre in North Boulder wanted to reopen and was having some difficulty, asked if we were interested enough in doing theatre that we'd like to be in relationship with Nomad. So I joined the board, and we worked out some ways to help get the theatre reopened.

RD: Was your vision with Nomad partly that this would provide you with a great venue for your theater company, the New Troubadors?

LT: Yes, and fortunately it was a good partnership all around. Don Berlin, who's the artistic director, directed the last play- "Darwin in the Dream Time"- and has been very supportive of us as playwrights. He's helped us enormously in many ways, and we feel the relationship has benefited both of us, the theatre as well as us as playwrights. It's just a sad fact that theatre and arts across the country are really suffering right now. There are many theatres around the country that have shut down, or restricted their programs from six plays to three or two.

RD: Tell me about your plays.

LT: We felt the call of Mary Magdalene seven years ago, and wrote a play called "My Magdalene," which was actually the first one that we produced at the Nomad Theatre. Since then, we've changed it- it's matured some, which plays need to do. You must continue to work with them and make them better. Our last play was "Darwin in the Dream Time." This came from our experience in Australia working with Robert Lawler, author of Voices of the First Day, and also author of Sacred Geometry. He knows quite a bit about the roots of aboriginal thinking, and from that, we began to realize the impact of Darwinistic thinking on our whole world.
      Darwinistic thinking would have us be the result of random activity of cosmic rays working on DNA, creating mutations, which are then subject to the vagaries and whims of nature, changing food supply, predators, warmth and cold. As a consequence, we make changes over time, called evolutionary changes, which render us a random collection of mongrel parts. In addition, all of this is thought to be happening on a little rock orbiting a mediocre star, which is in a backwater of a galaxy amongst billions of other galaxies- in other words, life is all totally random and insignificant.
      Now, where does that lead you? It leads you to the conclusion, if there is no past and no future, there is nothing but your senses, nothing but pleasure. That leads you to consumerism. In other words, there's money in Darwinistic thinking. And there are reasons- maybe conscious, maybe unconscious, depending on how conspiratorial you'd like to be- for people who sell things to want you to think in a Darwinistic manner. That summarizes my view of Darwinism.

DT: I would want to bring in social Darwinism, because it's essential to recognize that social Darwinism took advantage of a very narrow perception of the theory of Darwin, and used it to its advantage at the particular time that Darwin hit the Victorian English scientific world. Social Darwinism is basically what became the acceptable modus operandi of "only the fittest will survive."

LT: Therefore let us prove that we are the fittest by flexing our muscles and bashing people about.

DT: Now, Darwin himself was a fine scientist, a good observer of nature and very reclusive. And he was a brilliant naturalist. The current applications of Darwinistic thinking are very different from Charles Darwin himself. So the play takes Darwin as a disembodied spirit, puts him together with his great-great granddaughter, who is on her death bed needing to sort some things out, and brings in her mentor, a native indigenous woman named "Mamala," who is helping her alleviate the tensions in her ancestors. Most cultures think about taking care of their ancestors, and if there's one that's stuck in what you could call purgatory- some place where people do not die peacefully- it's the living's responsibility to help them get unstuck and let them move on. There's also a hospital nurse, a young indigenous man who has rejected his past. And so we have all these dynamics on stage. And the reason Sarah Darwin wants to know what's going on with her great-great grandfather is that she experienced indigenous culture as a young girl, and came to know its beauty and its simplicity.

RD: I'm assuming your indigenous culture represents a contrast to Darwinian thinking.

DT: It very much represents indigenous wisdom.

RD: Characterize it in contrast to Darwinian thinking.

LT: Earth. Life. Love of place, understanding the elders and the importance of the ancestors. So the idea that Darwin would consider evolution through a monkey ancestor is particularly amusing to the indigenous woman because their culture is so clear. And they're clear that they don't come from monkeys. Her creation story is that her ancestors come from the same stuff as the stars.
      Our culture has always said you either are a creationist, meaning you believe literally in the Bible and Adam and Eve, or you're an evolutionist, and you believe that we came from monkeys. And there's nothing in between, nothing that incorporates both, and maybe is bigger than both, which was David's and my inspiration for this play. If you're not a creationist or an evolutionist, there must be another choice. A creation myth that our culture could find and identify with might, in fact, give us some sense of where we've come from and where we're going.

RD: Does this play present a creation myth that bridges those two?

LT: No, it wants to just ask, to pose the question. A lot of people haven't paused to think about it, or they've been taught so strongly through the filter of science classes that Darwinism is a fact, when in fact it is not a fact. It's a theory that has a lot of holes in it, but it has come through an educational institution that says "This is the way it is. We come from apes." We don't question it, because that's what we've been taught in school. Or we believe in the creation model, because that's what we've been taught in church.
      I don't think it's one or the other, either creation or evolution. I think it's some intricate combination of the two. And I really think individuals need to inquire about it. It can't come through a belief system and be authentic. It's got to be deeply asked and deeply answered in a life. We need to become a country of Gnostics, a country of people who are willing to directly know and experience, to question authority and what we've been taught, and to come into authentic wisdom, so that we can survive as a species- so that we deserve to survive. That's even more appropriate. Why do we even deserve to survive, given the kinds of things that are going on? We're so out of balance with the earth, and of being stewards of this beautiful place.

RD: It sounds like you're describing what you hope an audience member who sees your play would walk away with.

LT: Yes, and it's happened- maybe not on as broad a scale as we would like, but it's happened. With the Magdalene play, we were fascinated by how many women returned, having had a dream or a vision. In many cases, something very deep and profound happened to them. They began to unravel that myth, in which Magdalene was the carrier of the feminine mystic quality, the high priestess energy, and was labeled a prostitute instead. She was an intelligent and highly favored apostle and disciple of Jesus, his constant companion- that part is clear from the Gnostic texts.
      Magdalene represents an important part of this feminine lineage of strong, spiritual teachers. She reminds us of the question, "Where do we find empowerment as women?" And I think indigenous cultures have many of those answers, understanding feminine mysticism and reclaiming the nurturing of the earth itself. They're so connected to the web of earth and life. They're part of the land, they steward the earth and that, to me, is a feminine quality of caring and nurturing. There are different ways of being on the earth, and clearly we need to shift the one that's operative now, or the survival of the fittest is going to prove to be the demise of everybody.
 
RD: What's your next play?

LT: We're not actively writing another piece right now- we're working on rewording some of the plays of the past. We're rewriting the Darwin play right now, and hoping to have it staged in Australia, where we're also building a healing retreat.

DT: It's an extraordinary place, where the mountain rises rapidly from the ocean. So there's the ocean, and a mountain that goes straight up 2500 feet, and we're on the little valley off to the side with waterfalls and fresh water coming down. It's an astonishing place. We call it "The Healing Dreams Retreat."

RD: You have so many projects and activities. What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?

DT: I want to make sure the Path of the Ceremonial Arts is an ongoing, active, healthy program, with competent staff, because the service it performs for women of all ages is extraordinary and needed. The women who come out of there are so empowered and potent in the world. One graduate has taken on the most interesting dedication: the healing of water, which has taken her to many places in the world to be an advocate for the purity of water. Another one has come up with a way to bring star wisdom to people in a way that isn't airy-fairy or flaky. She actually teaches a little class with me at Star House, called "Star Wisdom 101." 
      The various PCA women have these wonderful, life destiny questions that come to the fore in their lives, and rather than being pushed aside for a year or years, they're acting on them now. A similar program for men is also being created, although it will have its own flavor. That will probably be starting in April of 2004. And then the Star Wisdom part is always a theme in Star House. We have a conference at Star House called "Star Wisdom in the Light of Sophia: Revelations of the Signs of our Times," from June 18 to 20. We'll have mature astrologers from various parts of the country, and one from Germany, gathering for a presentation about Star Wisdom in the Light of Sophia, Sophia being the divine feminine.
      Our role is to continue to monitor these kinds of programs to make sure they never err on the side of hysteria, which is one of the downfalls of spiritual thinking: for example, saying, "Oh, my God, Mars is the closest it's ever been to the world. What do we do, what do we do?" While these events are real, they're also subtle, and they need to be experienced in subtle ways.
      What I love most about the Path of the Ceremonial Arts is that it's repetitive, like the moons. We've all had experiences where we come away from workshops feeling fantastic, but then we tend to slide. Over time, it's as if the workshop never happened. But if you involve repetitive activity, you can begin to nurture long term changes.
      Star House and All Seasons Chalice are devoted to that. We offer opportunities to experience the seasons. So in the Winter Solstice, we experience cold and dark: all the candles are blown out and everything is made completely dark- we actually experience dark, which is extremely rare for modern people.
      We often use the plant metaphor at the Star House: the plant goes from the contraction of the sleeping seed, where it's the tightest and most contracted. Then, in the spring, the shoot and the root and the leaves begin to expand, then there's a contraction again into the bud of the flower. Then there's an expansion again into the flower, and a contraction into the pistil and the stamen. Then there's an expansion into the fruit, and a contraction into the seed. That metaphor can help us understand where we are in the season. Are we in a place of contraction or expansion? We can use that to further our own growth.
      Winter, for example, occurs in the period between Christmas and Easter, which is meant to be a time of inner spirit rest. Some time during that period, you really need to find spirit rest, to go dreaming, to be still and inert, like a seed. In the spring, when expansion begins, the responsibility is to say, "How do I experience this awakening? What's awakening in me? What is shooting out in terms of new roots, new shoots, new leaves, opening up to the wisdom of the sunlight?"