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I teach a religiously diverse crowd at my college. In any given Intro to Christianity course, I can expect one or two atheists, one or two conservative Christians, and twenty students running the rest of the gamut in between – my agnostics with religious trauma, my cultural Catholics, my “we went to church until I started playing sports” folks, and a group of people who are into spirituality but could never imagine themselves being committed to any one religious tradition. This is how I like it! More variety means better conversations, more interesting questions, and a lot of learning from one another. As I tell them, practicing talking about religion with people from another background is a little awkward, but being able to talk awkwardly about important things is a needed and transferable skill. Even if they never talk about religion again after they take their final for my class, they’ve still practiced for the day when they’ll need to ask their boss for a raise, or tell their significant other that the laundry situation is a big deal and needs to be solved now. Awkward conversations are a part of life!But I don’t want my students to just marinate in the awkward – I want them to think about how they can communicate and connect across difference, and to grow in mutual respect for the experiences and beliefs of others. This is a more complex task. How can I simultaneously suggest to the non-religious that there might be something lovely in the way religious people use traditions and rituals to stay rooted, while also teaching my most traditional believers that maybe there’s something exciting in how people without religious commitments forge their own paths and craft their own meaning? Oddly enough, inspiration struck in my own garden. I grow plants with far more enthusiasm than skill, but I do find that some of the fun of gardening is doing it a little “wrong” and seeing what happens. From my literal and metaphorical soil sprouted a metaphor that I now use constantly when trying to explain why some people love religion while others don’t – tomatoes and cucumbers.People, I say, might be more like tomatoes, or more like cucumbers. Tomatoes (or at least the tomatoes I manage to grow), love structure. They do great when surrounded by a framework to grow into, like a tomato cage or trellis. They grow bigger, leaf out better, and fruit more if they have something to help hold them up. So too, some people thrive with religious structure. They like the parameters and clear expectations. They feel safer with something to lean into – beliefs, community, ritual – when life feels less stable. There’s nothing better or worse about thriving with structure. It’s just the way tomatoes work best.Then again, people might also be cucumbers. Cucumbers (at least the ones I cultivate), laugh at every attempt I make to corral them. Trellis? No thank you. Wire cage? Cute, but not happening. Once the cucumbers start, they go where they darn well please. They find the best light, the prime pollinator areas, and the most hidden spots to grow their fruit on their own. Every time I’ve forced a cucumber plant up a structure that I created, it droops and mopes and refuses to blossom or fruit until it makes a break for it when I’m not looking. Cucumbers want to be free! And when I just let them go on their own journey, they thrive. People can be like that too – structure can feel constricting and artificial rather than comforting, and they’d rather strike out on their own to see what they learn, and create something entirely unique. There’s nothing better or worse about thriving with space and options – it’s just how cucumbers work best.While the metaphor may reveal more about my sub-par gardening chops than I’d like, I do appreciate having a relatively neutral way to explore how religiosity just looks and feels different for each person. How do you explain the variety of ways to be religious to your students?

We live in a world fraught with compartmentalization. Work outfits vs. weekend wear. Neighborhood friends vs. work colleagues. Convocation vs. chapel. I get it. We like to orient our world based on neatly stacked boxes where we can stuff the various facets of our lives. The problem is this doesn’t reflect the design principles that surround us or the various environments in which we live and operate. We know from a study of nature that everything is connected to everything else. Callenbach reminds us that there is a mutualism or symbiotic relationship in natural ecologies that prevents compartmentalization. He asserts, “Nothing alive exists in isolation from its ecological context. . . . Symbiotic relationships . . . are a universal way in which life forms survive and coexist.”[1] Each of the various ecological elements mutually interconnect with one another. As Taylor reminds us, “Apparently, there is little rugged individualism in nature.”[2]A few summers ago, I took up gardening. More specifically, I attempted to grow my favorite tomato variety, Celebrity. I found planters under the deck with some soil already in them and plopped my seedlings into those boxes. I found a shady spot by the house where they could thrive. I finished my project and waited to see what would happen! However, the saying “out of sight, out of mind” very much applied to my situation. They were out of sight, so watering wasn’t a priority. I barely even tended to them other than to impatiently check for growth. You can probably guess what happened to my hopes of a plentiful tomato crop. I discovered that tomatoes need a lot of sunlight. They also need regular watering, proper soil nutrition, and ongoing tending. This includes removing suckers, staking the plants, and checking for blossom end rot. Everything in that tomato’s ecosystem impacted everything else. Sadly, we didn’t eat a lot of tomatoes that summer, but I learned some important lessons: nothing thrives in isolation and intentionality is critical to growth.These lessons from the natural world apply to teaching and learning. We may think that teaching is a disconnected enterprise, but just like the tomato garden, it is part of a larger ecosystem or constellation of interconnected elements. Our students are connected to one another in a variety of ways including their families of origin, friends, neighbors, co-workers, faculty, staff, communities of faith, and to the broader world. They bring all these social connections and relationships like checked baggage to our classrooms. Not only that, they also take what they have learned back to their respective relationships, responsibilities, and even life contexts. The reciprocal dynamic at work in all natural, social, spiritual, and learning ecologies nurtures growth because of the impact bi-directional engagements have on the teacher and learner.[3] The learner isn’t an isolated element in the classroom but rather brings a number of connections from their social networks, life experiences, ministry opportunities, and adult responsibilities. Bronfenbrenner used the language of nested ecologies to describe the various levels or environments in which a person engages and develops.[4]These complimentary ecosystems interconnect with each other as a way of facilitating and stimulating mutualistic growth.When learning is connected to the student’s multi-contextualized realities, we see impact not just in test scores or nicely articulated papers but also in a holistic approach to navigating the world around them. In one class I teach, my students learn how to develop and use a modified form of Hartman’s ecomap[5] called an ecoplan. In this plan, they must identify a daily strategy to address an activity or a way of being, centered around all six dimensions of a whole person formation model, (physical, mental, emotional, social, moral, and spiritual) first proposed by Ted Ward.[6] For example, on Mondays, they will commit to some form of physical activity, intellectual exercise, emotional engagement, social practice, moral obligation, and spiritual discipline. Something similar is identified for each day of the week. At first it seems overwhelming to them but once they start implementing their plan, they’re often amazed at how easy it is to incorporate an integrated approach to how they live. They begin to understand that what happens in one of the dimensions impacts and is impacted by all the others. They see that proper attention to physical activity has an impact on emotional health. Similarly, intentionality with respect to spiritual practices has an impact on their relationships to one another, and healthy emotional habits may influence mental health as well.In all that we teach, we should be mindful that there is an inherent and inescapable connection between the content we deliver, the teaching that we facilitate, and the way in which students live out what they are learning. When our teaching accommodates these human ecosystem dynamics, we create a far richer learning experience and one that potentially creates lasting impact. Teaching, from this perspective, shifts from content management to formative integration of content.Once we understand that the educational compartments we construct have to be permeable and connected to others, we have an opportunity to radically reshape teaching and learning paradigms. Here’s to a bumper crop of tomatoes andintegrated learners! Notes & Bibliography[1] E. Callenbach, Ecology: A Pocket Guide (University of California Press, 2008), 134.[2] W. Taylor, “Significance of the Biotic Community in Ecological Studies,” The Quarterly Review of Biology 10, no. 3 (1935): 296.[3] S. Lowe, and Lowe, M., Ecologies of Faith in a Digital Age: Spiritual Growth through Online Education (IVP Academic, 2018).[4] U. Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design (Harvard University Press, 1979).[5] A. Hartman, Finding Families: An Ecological Approach to Family Assessment in Adoption (Sage Publications, 1979).[6] T. Ward, Values Begin at Home (Victor Books, 1989).