11/11/2025
Remembrance and Reflection.
You don’t often see Dode’s alter like this. Stripped bare of its cloth, candles and furnishings it is, to my mind, somewhat brutal, ugly even.
The five incised crosses, traditional in Christian iconography, do little to mitigate its harsh impact.
The two ceramic remembrance poppies, once formed a tiny part of an art installation at the Tower of London, where, eleven years ago, together with almost 900,000 others they represented the British and Commonwealth soldiers who tragically lost their lives in the First World War.
As a nation we are proud of our history and the Tower is arguably our most iconic landmark, visited and admired by millions of people from all over the world, there’s a legend that if the ravens ever leave, the kingdom will fall.
But it wasn’t always like this. The tower wasn’t conceived in that way at all.
Painted white, and forever after known as ‘The White Tower’ it was built by a conquering force, to subjugate the land, it was a tool of oppression and domination.
The man responsible for its construction was named Gundulf.
At Dode, if you strip away our romantic notions of the past, it’s the same.
Constructed at the same time as The White Tower, was the church built ‘to the glory of god’ or, in its thick stone walls, ‘arrow slit’ windows, and commanding position at the head of a valley, was it making a different statement?
Far from the natural stone that we have come to love, it was rendered and painted white both externally and internally. Like our alter, in its original form it must have been somewhat brutal.
And the man responsible for Dodes construction? He was also Gundulf.
It’s at times like this, when we remember the past, that history sometimes speaks in a conflicting, confusing language.
Blessed Be - Doug.
