Speaker: Rev. Theresa (Tet) Gallardo

Rev. Tet is minister of the Bicutan Congregation in Manila, the Philippines, and is this year’s Balazs Scholar at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley.
Website: http://www.reverendtet.com

Open Sea Spirituality

Radical hospitality, communal interbeing, and diversity that lends to ungovernability as lived in 7,641 islands of the Philippines, makes for Rev. Tet Gallardo’s personal spirituality. Welcoming other cultures for centuries, including refugees from the Holocaust, Vietnan War, Bolshevik Revolution, Japanese Invasion, Burmese persecution, and more, the Philippines has also been a haven for about a million white American retirees and homeless. And yet they are not doormats. They have undergone a 100-year period of revolution from 1898 to 1998, ousting the Spanish, the Americans, the Japanese, a dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and a plunderer Joseph Estrada. Now one of the top five fastest growing economies of the world, the gender gap is absent, same with Scandinavian countries; it has a 95% literacy rate. This country has been lending money to global financial institutions for the last decade. Music: Varsha Saxena, new age piano