My generation, Generation X, had Nirvana and Pearl Jam. We wore our flannel shirts and ripped jeans with the pride of teenagers wondering what the twenties will be like, and we were the first generation to use email in our interactions. But before all of this -- the rise of grunge music and the internet – we had the Muppets. A happy memory from my childhood includes waiting all week for the next episode and being completely tuned into it when it aired, and, yes, “aired” is another term from my youth: not streamed. Fozzie Bear was always my favorite, though Animal always made me chuckle. Part of the Muppets family also included Emmet Otter from Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, which premiered in December of 1977, days shy of my third birthday. The storyline is simple enough. Emmet Otter wants to get his mother a piano, so he puts a hole in her washtub to fashion a washtub bass with the idea that he and his friends could enter and win a talent contest. His mother has the same idea. She hocks a toolkit to get money to buy fabric for a dress she plans to wear as a contestant in the same contest. Emmet’s mother wants to buy him a guitar for Christmas. Neither knows the other’s plans and, sadly, neither wins the contest. Viewers are gifted with a surprise ending that will not be ruined here. Understandably, songs permeate the holiday special, but one in particular has caught my fancy. “When the River Meets the Sea” is a lament about crossing over from this life to the next. We learn that Emmet Otter’s father is dead, which explains why mother and son are so financially strapped, so when the mother breaks into song about mountains and clouds, a river and the sea, viewers get a glimpse into the heart of a widow, doing her best to provide for her son. She sings, “When the mountain touches the valley, all the clouds are taught to fly / as our souls will leave this land most peacefully. / Though our minds be filled with questions, in our hearts we’ll understand / when the river meets the sea.”
As a boy, my curiosity may have been piqued by her sadness, but I can assure you, dear listener, that I was not explicating the lyrics as I might now explicate a poem. There was no intense study – no major effort to unpack the meaning of the lyrics. I now look at one of the delights of my childhood in a different light, though. Why would somebody include a song about the afterlife in a children’s show? Perhaps it can be chalked up to it being a different time. Some episodes of the Muppets included alcohol and smoking, after all. If you are curious, Google the Muppets and “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers. Much of that would not pass muster in children’s programming today. But even so, is the inclusion of “When the River Meets the Sea” a nod to a greater understanding of what children can handle? Were children somehow included in a conversation that is difficult to have?
The metaphor is beautiful. Rivers wind. The zig, and they zag. They get deep, and they get shallow, placid and rough. Sometimes they even dry up, and sometimes somebody wants to dam them up – stop their flow. It is a circuitous, unpredictable existence, yet the sea awaits them all: enormous, expansive, as the song later tells us, “almighty.” Emmet Otter’s mother continues, “Like a flower that has blossomed in the dry and barren sand, / We are born and born again most gracefully. / Thus the winds of time will take us with a sure and steady hand / when the river meets the sea.”
What we cannot begin to understand in our minds, our hearts will understand. Our hearts will know. That great leap – that great transition – does not require an advanced degree in theology. Perhaps, then, we have our answer as to why the song is in a children’s show. Our deaths will be simple. Our hearts already know the way. Peace comes in accepting this to be true. As Christ says, "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” It is fitting, then, that the song ends the way it does. She concludes, “Like a baby when it is sleeping in its loving mother’s arms, / what a newborn baby dreams is a mystery / But his life will find a purpose and in time he’ll understand / when the river meets the sea. / When the river meets the almighty sea.”
The Muppets. On life. On passing. On our universal journey to the sea. Wacka. Wacka. Wacka.
