That's the thought bubble above a whale driving a tiny car who has just rear-ended Captain Ahab in one of my favorite The Far Side cartoons. In the cartoon Ahab isn't directly identified; it was enough for Gary Larson to draw an older gentleman with a peg-leg wearing a black coat stepping out of his smashed car holding a spear.

Ninety-nine percent of everyone would know immediately that this was "Moby Schtick."

Even if few of us have read Moby Dick we know the general concept and that Captain Ahab's quest is one of literature's greatest narrations of the destructiveness of wrath. Ahab gives himself fully over to rage and it consumes him.

Hopefully our experience of rage, anger, and wrath are more attenuated or at least kept private, but for me it's uncomfortable to realize how easy it is for me to empathize with his attachment to rage. And, there are too many books, songs, and films about this cluster of emotions to not conclude that they are universally-understood and experienced.

So, let's talk about it. If you haven't guessed by now the "Deadly Sin" we will be talking about tomorrow is wrath (with a nod to anger, bitterness, and rage). Captain Ahab will be joining us in the sermon, along with Captain Kirk, Ricardo Montalban, and Ron Swanson.