What if God is a Hydrothermal Vent?

Sorry. Let me rephrase that: My god is a hydrothermal vent.

Years ago, before our first trip to the big island of Hawaii, my son and I watched a documentary about volcanoes. It made me sweaty with excitement. I couldn't sit still. It felt like an epiphany. Like someone had just told me the meaning of life, and the origin of it too.

To create a living cell from raw, inanimate elements, you need two key ingredients: intense heat and an insane amount of pressure. Hydrothermal vents have both. They likely created the first single-cell organisms on our planet.

Annnnnnnd, I learned later, volcanoes also probably created water and air.
WATER.
AND.
AIR.

The ocean looks different to me now. It sounds woo-woo, but: It feels like our communal birthplace. I feel certain we are made from earth, by earth, just like all the other animals here.

(My son, however, disagrees. He says humans are too special, too exceptional, too many lightyears ahead of the rest of the animals. He thinks we may be descended from ancient aliens.)

This is the time of year when people of so many faiths pause to consider their creator. We wonder how our creation story can give meaning and purpose to our lives.

For me, god is a hydrothermal vent. My creator is a volcano. And I am made of the same wild, powerful stuff as a volcano. The same wild, powerful stuff as the ocean. And so are you.

For more information, read “Hydrothermal Vents and the Origin of Life,” published in Nature Reviews Microbiology, October 2008, by William Martin, John Baross, Deborah Kelley, and Michael J. Russell. Although, the book I love most on this topic is Volcano Watching by Robert and Barbara Decker. An original, paperback, 1984 second-edition of the book found its way to me through a used bookstore in Kona, and I was thrilled to find it also contained a 1980-something, one-page visitor’s guide to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Magical. I wish you could smell it.

Oh also: Illustration by ChatGPT