A Dialogue on Divinity featuring Fr. John Chryssavgis (Executive Director, Huffington Ecumenical Institute) in conversation with the Very Rev. Winnie Varghese (Dean, Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine)
Monday, February 23, 2026
6:30-8:00 pm Eastern
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10025
The Western and Eastern church traditions observe strikingly different, but powerfully resonant, holy days that initiate the season of Lent—yet both traditions intimately conjoin Lenten humility and purifying preparation for Easter with an ecological sensibility of integrity with and belonging to the earth. The Latin rite for Ash Wednesday invokes Genesis 3:19: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” The Greek liturgy for Clean Monday, though no less penitential, rejoices in the blossoming earth and strips the human creature down to its earthen essentials: “The springtime of the Fast has dawned, the flower of repentance has begun to open.”
Join us at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine as Dean Winnie Varghese joins in a very special conversation with Fr. John Chryssavgis—Executive Director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute, Archdeacon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and Theological Advisor to the “Green Patriarch” Bartholomew I—whose depth of insight into the obligation and opportunity for Christians to recover their sense of integrity with creation is world-renowned. They will discuss the spiritual and ritual practices of the Lenten season, within the horizon of an ecological realignment of Christian identity, institutions, and interfaith relations.