Journal Entry | Personal Insight
Making a connection with Green Day’s popular song “Wake me up when September Ends” and the concept of a new day in time portrayed in the Jewish New Year Festival Rosh Hashanah…because I’m me ;-p
Fall brings a lot of mixed emotions, and I’m learning maybe that’s not just a coincidence for me alone. Before I could finish this article, one of my friends called last night sharing a series of unfortunate events that seemed to befall her out of nowhere over the past two weeks.
The heat of Summer, especially this year in Florida has been so overkill and we’re all ready here for Summer to end and Autumn to begin1. I love the cool weather, the falling leaves and going into cozy-mode.
I know the official first day of fall hasn’t arrived on the calendar yet, but imo, there have been at least two qualifying days of a changing season, and with respect the the fall holy days, I’m considering it fall already.
Although I’ve waded into September with much greater ease than, say…last year, there was a long time when the first breezes of fall brought along with it the eerie reminders of tragedies that always seemed to happen to me in / or around Fall, triggering memories I struggled to manage until my fall marriage and my eventual detaching memories from each other.
(email me if you’d like to learn more about this exercise, but basically, simply recognizing each event happened separately and was not related to the other; allowing them to be separate events as opposed to a string of events, where one event (like a simple breeze of wind) would trigger all other events -not fun as you might imagine!)
I think last year was the first year I recognized the spiritual significance of this season and why it seems to be such a time of turmoil, not just for me, but obviously for so many others in the world, as summed up by Green Day’s popular song, “Wake Me Up When September Ends”.
“Like my father’s come to pass
Twenty years have gone so fast
Wake me up when September ends”
“Billie wouldn’t leave his room. When his mother encouraged him to leave it, he simply replied, “Wake me up when September ends.”2
Released June 2005, peaking at #6 in the US, #8 in CA and #13 in Australia.3 The original intent behind the lyrics written by Billie Joe Armstrong was to convey his childhood trauma and the grief of losing his father to cancer in September 1982, while he was just 10 years old. But elements of 9/11 seem to be reflected in several factors, including album dates and the scenes of military enlistment and war (after a betrayal happened between he and his presumed girlfriend.)
“The video strays from the original meaning of the song and instead focuses on the teenage couple as the boyfriend promises never to leave his girlfriend. Later in a lengthy sequence, the girlfriend confronts him about something he did (open-ended), repeatedly yelling, “How could you do this to me?” Although the audience does not know what he did, in the next scene he is hesitantly being marched out of a bus and into a room where his head is shaved. Thus, her wrath is either because he enlisted himself into the United States Marine Corps, or else his being enlisted was a consequence of whatever bad thing he did (following the generic trope of authority figures sending “disruptive” young men into the military).”4
While Rosh Hashanah brings in the fall feasts and presumably the sealing of one’s fate for a new religious year, it’s become a means of coping for me as I understand it for what it is and as I understand it in faith: as a symbolic shadow of the new age to come – the new eternal year of true peace and freedom, of love and harmony, of no tears and no more shadows, as spoken of by the prophets of old and as our conscience dreams of.
So regardless what fate is sealed for the next temporal year, I have hope for the eternal day, eternal age, world without end as they say. And somehow, it feels closer now than ever. At least for me…
Revelation 21:1–5
“Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’ Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ And He said to me, ‘Write, for these words are true and faithful.’ “
In my previous article, I made the case that the strange events taking place around the world aren’t entirely random, but are warning us and preparing us for things we’ve never seen or experienced.
It may as well be hocus pocus to some, but I’ve also noted how a shared experience happened last night, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, by a group of “sensitive individuals” who claimed to all have felt a significant shift in the universe, and that’s enough to at least raise my eyebrow in connection.
The feast days are not just calendar days, they’re days tied to astronomical, cosmic alignment.
So when Green Day sings, “wake me up when September ends,” it lends even more to the idea that an awakening needs to happen in order to pass into a new reality from a less preferred state. The universal grief of war, devastation, and experiencing the absence of love and freedom where it’s expected to be found also lend to the eternal truths our consciences bear witness to, that lead us to conclude the world is not as just as it should be and if losses can’t be saved, they must be redeemed, somehow, someway, someday… Who knows? Maybe a “Green Day”?? =0]
And guess what… as it so happens there’s a mystery inside the Feast of Trumpets. It begins where it ends and it ends where it begins. The Jewish New Year marks the entire span of time from the creation of the known world to present, so it’s essentially the birth year of creation and of Adam representing mankind.
So it’s a bittersweet thing, because while the trumpets are closing one year, they are heralding a new year. While they are sounding the alarm, they are declaring a conclusion.
Isaiah 65:17–19
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing, and her people a joy. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in My people; the voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her, nor the voice of crying.”
Green Day sings, “as my memory rests, but never forgets what I lost,” but the future life will be so amazing, it will heal us to the point that the past will no longer have any appeal. We will not miss it or want to go back or want to stay unhealed.
So even if the world is ending, and it becomes darker than ever, it’s only because the light is about to break through greater than ever.
And it has to be this way, because at the time light was in the world, it was rejected in favor of darkness, but the darkness couldn’t overtake it, so it has been growing brighter and brighter since then and when you imagine the pain a woman has to go through in order to give birth to a child, you can understand what’s at the end of the pain and suffering our present world is going through… if you have that kind of faith, of course.
You cannot speak of the light in the world without speaking of the Light of the World, Jesus Christ. A manifestation of a loving Heavenly Father is that everyone who comes to this life is blessed with the Light of Christ to help them return home. President Boyd K. Packer taught: “The Spirit of Christ is always there. … The Light of Christ is as universal as sunlight itself. Wherever there is human life, there is the Spirit of Christ.” The Light of Christ “inviteth and enticeth to do good continually” and prepares all who seek goodness and truth to receive the Holy Ghost.5
When Life Becomes A Nightmare
There are so many things in life we have no control over…when we are born or when we die or when we will lose someone we love … and maybe, as much as we don’t like it initially, we wouldn’t want the responsibility of choosing if we are really honest with ourselves.
When the last trump is sounded, it will begin the heavenly judgment to determine how each soul’s eternal fates are sealed, but it’s also the resurrection trumpet. So there’s this duality of life and death, joy and sorrow at the same time before all tears are wiped away.
The Unetane Tokef prayer, recited on Rosh Hashanah since medieval times, states, “B’Rosh Hashanah yikateivu, u’v’yom tzom Kippur yeichateimun,” “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the fast day of Yom Kippur it is sealed” (from the Unetane Tokef prayer). The prayer plainly names what will be decided that day: “who will live and who will die.” -Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Israel365news
Where life comes from and where it goes in the end are mysteries that guide our conscience to seek greater awareness of ourselves and our world and what’s beyond us, and if we come to the best conclusion, to be grateful to be a part of this crazy, beautiful, scary and wonderful thing called life and to live it in our best capacity, as our best self, even if we have to start at zero…more than once.
“when huge events like that happen at such a young age, it’s almost like starting life again at “year zero.” -Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day
Every year is a new start, but every day can be a new start too.
While you’re waiting for something to end, don’t forget to begin to live in between.
Fun Fact: Did you know? “At the end of every September like clockwork, Billie gets a flood of notifications on social media of fans telling him to wake up just like the song’s title suggests.”6
Are you awake? Post in the comments below!
iam:ForeverBlessed
- local input ↩︎
- https://www.distractify.com/p/meaning-behind-wake-me-up-when-september-ends#:~:text=Billie%20wouldn%27t%20leave%20his%20room.%20When%20his%20mother%20encouraged%20him%20to%20leave%20it%2C%20he%20simply%20replied%2C%20%22Wake%20me%20up%20when%20September%20ends.%22 ↩︎
- the song is dated September 10, and it is track 11 on the album ↩︎
- https://greendaysongs.fandom.com/wiki/Wake_Me_Up_When_September_Ends#:~:text=The%20video%20strays,into%20the%20military). ↩︎
- https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2017/04/brighter-and-brighter-until-the-perfect-day?lang=eng ↩︎
- https://www.distractify.com/p/meaning-behind-wake-me-up-when-september-ends ↩︎
Angle & Perspective 
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