Free The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld by Justin Hocking Page A

demise of whaling to the discovery of petroleum, without mentioning overfishing, the film fails to make any spiritual links between the two unsustainable industries—to point out what seems obvious to me: that history is repeating itself.
    As I wander the small deck of the Lagoda , wondering how it compared in size and shape to Melville’s Pequod , I can’t help but imagine our current national leader and his vice president as a pair of deranged Ahabs, forcefully steering the American military into the dangerous waters of Iraq—an ill-conceived detour from our original mission. It’s a depressing vision, until I remember that in the end, Ahab’s own madness is the source of his undoing, in a watery demise that makes Ophelia’s seem painless—a grim allegory of the way nature roots out hubris.

    Maybe someday, I hope, I might bring my own children to a Texas attraction called the Midland Oiling Museum, where visitors will marvel at display cases lined with hundreds of old dipsticks, dirty oil filters, cans of Pennzoil and Valvoline. The larger rooms will contain antiquated oil derricks, photos of defunct refineries, well-preserved gas station pumps, lovingly restored Cadillac Escalades, and a half-scale model of the Exxon Valdez . All of this will be presided over by large painted portraits of the long-deposed Bush dynasty, Dick Cheney, and members of the Saudi oil cartel, edged with gilded frames and tastefully illuminated by recessed lighting. We will all stand around smiling, pointing, feigning interest while patronizing curators wax nostalgic about the relatively short lifespan of such a wasteful, violent, environmentally toxic, yet wholeheartedly American enterprise.
    1 Through his cold-blooded exploitation of the petroleum industry, monopolist John D. Rockefeller became the nation’s first billionaire. His company Standard Oil was often portrayed in the popular media not as a whale but as a giant octopus, with its tentacles wrapped around every aspect of American life and labor. Standard Oil still exists today, largely in the form of subsidiaries such as Exxon and Chevron—the main culprits behind the Greenpoint oil spill.

THE SERMON (ALL SOULS)
    I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals…. Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
    ∼ HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby-Dick
    I read somewhere that if you mention God at a Manhattan dinner party you’ll silence the room; mention God twice and you’ll never be invited back.
    It’s for this reason—plus the fact that my roommates are non-religious and suspicious of anyone they think might be in a cult—that I sneak quietly out of my apartment on a Sunday morning. Walking past Neckface graffiti, children’s clothing stores stocked with infant-sized AC/DC T-shirts, record shops, and trendy pan-Asian restaurants, it’s a safe bet that of all my fashionable Brooklyn brethren, I’m the only one headed for church. The streets are mostly deserted, save for a few wasted-looking souls in tight jeans and leather jackets, just now heading home from strangers’ beds or coked-out afterparties on the Lower East Side.
    My secret morning sojourn is partly research-based: I’m headed for All Souls Unitarian, where Melville and his family were members. Exiting the number 4 train at Eighty-Second after a long ride, I walk a few blocks north and find the old stone church, adorned with a regal purple banner above a wide staircase. As I pass through the corner entrance, a cordial volunteer offers me a service pamphlet. The main chapel’s vaulted white ceiling soars high above me, the whole room spartan and clean and bright. I take a seat and read the pamphlet, which explains that Unitarian tradition calls for transparent windows rather than stained glass, to “let the Light in.”
    From my