Allie Papke-Larson: A change of seasons

Northern Minnesota has already had its first snowfall. My father sent out a short video the other morning with “the flakey white stuff” falling from the sky. The seasons are changing. Or at least they are in Minnesota. I feel a little confused by this Arizona fall with highs here in Flagstaff in the 80s.

But, never fear, we know the season is changing because according to capitalism fall has arrived! We are all free to purchase $7 pumpkin spice lattes (yum, I already have). And pumpkin cookies and Cheerios, Pumpkin Oreos, and even Pumpkin Spiced Pringles. All of these delicious treats come to us at this time of year not originally from capitalism, but from the simple fact that winter squash becomes ripe during the changing of the seasons. Of course! It’s a new experience for me having pumpkin flavored treats mark the coming season of fall more abundantly than the actual weather. 

I am jealous of my family in Minnesota and the snow they are getting, and it has to do with more than the beauty and fresh smell the snow brings. It also brings the changing of the season, and boy could I do with a season change right now.

The first snowfall of the season means the earth is still moving, and time is flowing. I could use an abrupt and significant reminder that our world isn’t stagnant or even that it isn’t moving back towards our long, hot summer. I could use a reminder, like falling snow and hard frost in October, because this season of COVID feels like it will never end. And I’m not just talking about the “hassle” of wearing masks or having to work from home, but the fear and exhaustion COVID brings piled on top of an already fearful and exhausting world.

I am ready for a new season, one to comfort and cool our nation’s hot wounds. A season for allowing the swelling to go down long enough for us to feel something besides the pain and see something besides the red blisters. I am praying for a season change that will be long enough for us to put a balm on our wounds. I am longing for a cold, quiet winter. 

But Arizona’s seasons don’t change the same way as they do in Minnesota. It is still hot here, especially south from Flagstaff where the temperatures are still in the triple digits; where the seasons will be marked mostly by which decorations are in the stores and lattes in coffee shops. 

We cannot control the seasons change. We cannot decide COVID is over, and that it’s time a new season. We humans believe we have control, and when we realize we don’t we somehow believe it’s because some else hasn’t done what they should: we wouldn’t be in our seventh month of COVID if President Trump had led the country differently; or we wouldn’t be in a climate crisis is the Baby-boomers acted when “there was still time.” Or we wouldn’t have to be protesting with signs that say the obvious “Black Lives Matter” if our white liberal middle-class citizens hadn’t believed that being “color blind” was what being anti-racist was. I have recently heard all of these things, and I can’t help but thinking: “but this is the world we are in!”

There is no going back, there is no figuring out exactly who messed up, because there are too many missed chances and sad mis-steps to count, and there have always been too many people with blisters they are trying soothed. Maybe it’s ego, or maybe sinfulness that is telling us we should have inherited anything different than what we have or that anyone else but us has responsibility for this time we live in.

This is our world and this is our mess. This is our season, our time to figure out who we, the people of this one planet and followers of Christ, are.  I wonder, are we going to add salt to our wounds, or find some snow to bring down the swelling? 

Allie Papke-Larson is Program Coordinator for Lutheran Campus Ministries/Canterbury Episcopal Campus Ministries at Northern Arizona University and Youth Director at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Flagstaff.