Page 4 - Your Extravagant Kindness

I employ various traditional attributes for Godde: Compassionate, Gracious, Merciful …
and also use “Creator,” “Holy One,” “Eternal One,” “the Eternal,” or “Ground of Being” rather

than Yahweh or Jehovah, words which have been used in the Christian tradition to represent
the Unspeakable Name of Godde, also known as the Tetragrammaton. “Lord” a translation of
Adonai (and LORD: a Hebrew substitution for the Tetragrammaton, often translated Master)
has been replaced with “Guardian” or “Protector.” “Adonai” itself is not really a proper name

but rather a title or appellative.” The root (ןדא) of the word Adonai is ‘foundation.’ “The name
Adonai literally means My Foundation and by implication My Lord.” 2

If we consider the English word “lord” and its roots in the Old English word hlāford which
originated from hlāfweard meaning "loaf-ward" or "bread keeper", we see that it reflects the
tribal custom of Germanic chieftains providing food for their followers. 3

In the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Volume 1, scholars suggest that the pre-
Semitic words ´adh and ´adhath – onomatopoetic words for “father” and “mother” – are root
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words that give us the word ´adhon or ´adhonāi (Adonai). I share these Hebrew and English
etymologies for “lord” to remind us of the fluidity of the meaning of words. One can easily
make a bridge between the contemporary Jewish understanding of “foundational” and the
biblical scholars’ “father and mother.” Each child’s foundation is [meant to be] the love and
care of parents/guardians. We can see that the word for “lord” in more than one language has

its roots in the notion of a “caring for” that is not bound to gender. Exploring these
etymologies helps us rethink the ways in which we envision Godde.

Human persons are physical beings enlivened by the divine spirit. All too often we live our
lives trying to ignore, deny, or destroy some part of ourselves. Many times, the despised or
rejected parts of ourselves hold our attention and pull us in directions we'd rather not follow.

Unless we acknowledge our brokenness or our woundedness to a loving Godde there is the

danger that we will despair, and believe ourselves broken beyond repair, or perhaps even
believe that we are evil. There is the danger that we will project our rejected selves onto
others so that we can transfer our anger or hatred outward. We are invited to think of persons

2Abarim Publications -Meaning of Adonai.

3Wikipedia: Lord See also Ward: Old English weard - weardian ‘keep safe, guard’, of Germanic origin; reinforced in Middle
English by Old Northern French warde (noun), warder (verb) ‘guard’.Ward search
4 See pages 59-60. This has been proposed by Ginsberg and Herdner who employ Ugaritic texts, CTA, 23[SS] and 24[NK] to
support their arguments. The meaning of these words evolves into lord and lady, respectively. Here, too, one finds the
nuance of “stewardship.” Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Vol 1; G Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren,
editors, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 1974.