About Us

Letter from the Vicar

Dear Friends

Older people today are being reminded more than ever of the need to keep their minds active, engaged and open to new experiences through learning new skills and being active to prevent the onset of dementia and the retention of mental capacity and the ability to remember and relate.

November has been from the early days of the Christian Church a month to remember and commemorate. This begins on the 1st with All Saints’ Day and the link between the baptism of an individual and membership of God’s family and the company of saints whose lives reflected the presence of God’s light and love, and who have passed into God’s eternal realm, pointing the way for us to follow.

All Souls’ Day on the 2nd celebrates people’s lives in a very intimate way, offering thanksgiving for how they gave us life in the heart of family, nurtured and shaped our lives, and loved us often unconditionally and sacrificially. There is opportunity to remember them by name in a Commemoration of the Departed Service (at Bakewell Parish Church on Sunday 3rd November at 5pm) and please email me with any names of departed loved ones you would like named in this service, to which you are warmly invited to.

Remembrance Sunday on the 10th we share our memories, thoughts and reflections as we give thanks for the selfless sacrifice of many men and women in times of conflict in order for us to enjoy and share the peace and freedoms they fought and longed for. Whilst confessing the failings of a sinful human race As we stand in silence with the whole country and remember we confess our sorrow that the world today still knows brutal conflict that is taking so many lives and threatening the peace of the world.

Every year some voices are raised questioning why we still remember the fallen with parades and standards etc and how these recalls days of Empire and promotes war. People are entitled to their opinion and to absent themselves from the acts of remembrance, but

In remembering personal sacrifices and those of many members of our communities who are commemorated on War Memorials we are reminding ourselves that we don’t live our lives in isolation of the past, and the huge responsibility we have in this generation to confront the ongoing issues of war and peace, loss and self-sacrifice, memory and forgetting if we are to be serious in wanting to hand on to those who follow us a real hope for peace with justice, that somehow we can learn from the past in order to inform the future.

We remember not to glorify war but to pray for peace on earth and an end to the madness and waste of war that created, and continues to create so many cemeteries across the world for the military and civilian casualties of war and conflict.

We must never give up praying for, and working for peace, that begins with wanting and maintaining peace with one another; within our families, and in our dealings with people within our communities and our nation. This is how we honour the life and sacrifice of those we remember and never forget the gift of peace.

Every blessing

Canon Tony

Canon Tony’s last Service as Vicar before retirement will be on Sunday 27th April 2025.