By Pat Haggerty

Every Tuesday and Thursday my three year old grandson comes to my house and has breakfast with me.  There is a sort of ritual to those early mornings.  I prepare him an egg with the yellow soft so that he can “open the door” and dunk in his toast.  The toast has to be cut in triangles, and he usually washes everything down with a glass of apple juice.

While he is eating his breakfast, and before heading off to nursery school, we often watch a movie or play a game.  My husband and I have accrued quite a collection of children’s DVDs, so there are plenty of titles from which to select.  For the past few weeks, my grandson has been obsessed with the movie Hook.

It’s the old Robin Williams version of Peter Pan with Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell and Dustin Hoffman as Hook.  My grandson loves pirates, and he loves this movie!  No matter how many times we watch it, he is always enthralled with the wind swirling through the door of the nursery and of the slashes of sword marks on the wallpaper denoting the presence of Hook.

I must admit, I’ve become enamored with the movie myself.  There are some wonderful underlying messages throughout.  They seem to pop out at me with each viewing.  One of the messages that comes early on is the message of the evils of materialism and how we can become greedy with our own desires and yearnings for power.

Peter Banning (the grown-up Peter Pan, who has forgotten who he really is) shows us that in the movie.  He is too busy making money to go to his son’s baseball game, to concentrate on his daughter’s play, and to give some attention to his wife.  Even when he goes to London to visit the elderly Wendy, he is enveloped in his own business deals.  His son shares with Wendy that his Dad helps beleaguered companies by swooping in, taking control, and stomping on whatever needs to be eliminated.  Wendy looks shocked and says to Peter:  “Why, Peter, you’ve become a pirate!”

That struck me---no pun intended!  Are we pirates at some points in our lives?  Do we obsess over the material and constantly search for that element of power?  Have we lost sight of what is really important?  Do we ignore others while wrapped in our little cocoons of possessions and smugness?

Proverbs (23:4-5) tells us:  “Do not acquire wealth; be wise enough to desist.  When your eyes light upon it, it is gone; for suddenly it takes to itself wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.”

Certainly, these are words to reflect upon.  With Advent approaching and Christmas just around the corner, let us not be swooped away with materialism. Instead, let us ponder what is important about this upcoming season.  Let us look to the simplicity of Christ’s birth and bring that aspect of simplicity to how we live out the Advent season.  Let us treasure people more than things.  Above all, let us not be pirates!