Of all the blessings handed to me in 1961 by Frank Forrest none can have been of deeper significance than the established pattern of Sunday Meetings which combined the quiet sincerity of his own beliefs with a flexibility of presentation that ever invited fresh thought and commitment from all participants...at least I hope it was from all of them; let's say, after I took over, most of them, well, some, anyway. Certainly for the person responsible for organising these Meetings this tradition, too good to be allowed to lapse, was both demanding and stimulating. It may be on that account that I recollect these occasions as being of greater interest and meaning than others found them.

The thing above all that made them interesting was the variety of visitors that we persuaded to come and speak. By "we" I mean, beside myself, my current Deputy who took alternate Sunday Meetings. If we failed to find a speaker the pattern - I could hardly call it an order of service - demanded some original contribution from us, preferably unlike a sermon. It may be imagined how strongly motivated we were to find someone to relieve us of this daunting duty and how grateful we were, therefore, when somebody did so relieve us. The Deputies, in turn, were Tony Younger, Peter Norris, David Thornber, John Scott and Derek Lloyd. Each, of course, had his own area of special expertise and thought to share with us.

One of David's meetings will for ever stay in the memory of all my family. He has recently learned to fly not just ordinary aircraft but also helicopters. In his address to the school he explained in brilliantly clear detail the marvellous intricacy of the control of the pitch of the rotor blades. He was just about on the point of bringing the Meeting to a close when there was a whirring in the sky and a helicopter landed on the tennis court. The timing could not have been more perfect. Out we all filed and Poppy, my wife, was invited to go for a spin. Our three small daughters stood aghast as they saw their dear mother magically whisked away over the trees and out of sight.

From all the visitors who contributed to our Meetings one stands out in my memory and gratitude - or rather two - for the faithful consistency and personal quality of their support. These were Stanley and Winifred Sweet who hardly missed a term in all my ten years at Breckenbrough. All the way from Willerby, near Hull, they must have come over twenty times, Stanley always having something fresh and uplifting to say, put in that gently humerous way that left you thinking long after he had finished speaking. Also, of course, in that long time, they came to know the boys and staff and, I can assure them if they read this, to be by them much loved. On one particularly memorable occassion the singing, which included Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind", really took off, accompanied by guitars and a tin of nails.

More usually Kelvin Gott's immaculate example and lead on the piano was a delight, making its own special affirmation of the whole occasion. Should anyone wonder why the issue could be in the slightest degree open to question it has to be remembered that the majority of those present were hardly enthusiastic to proclaim their religious commitment nor prepared to accept uncritically some shallow version of "that same old stuff again".

Other Friends whose support meant much to me on a personal level as well as in the conduct of Meetings were John Reader, with his special understanding of the problems of running a boarding school, and Stephen and Hattie Cory. I particularly remember Hattie sharing with us her interest in the Lifeboats.

Whilst it is not my object here to extol the Quaker tradition at Breckenbrough I happily acknowledge that it was the very liberality of Quaker thought, as I percieve it, which enabled me to adopt an eclectic approach to religion in the school generally and to Sunday Meetings in particular.

If one may think of a left and right wing in religion as in politics our visitors ranged from a former Everton goalkeeper turned to evangilism and the Pentacostal minister from Richmond-on-Swale on the left, I suppose, to a Benedictine monk from Ampleforth on the right. In between, so to speak, we had the blind Methodist minister from Thirsk, the Chaplain of the Teachers Training College in Ripon, the first headmaster, Mr. G.B. Arnold of the Senior Boys Approved School which had just taken over the old Green Howards Depot at Richmond, the headmaster of Thirsk Grammar School, Mr. Stephen King, and the Chief Constable of the North Riding, Mr. Harold Salisbury. If I remember these particularly it is because they either already were or soon became friends. Most of them came several times. Others there certainly were, both clerical and lay, but of whom I have no idiosyncratic recollections, such is the feebleness of my ageing memory...my loss on both counts.

Harold Salisbury, I recall, found my point of view somewhat questionable when I claimed that if I drove through Northallerton at forty miles an hour but keeping a wary eye in the mirror for following police cars I was driving with excuisite respect for the law. He was glad, however, that this was not part of my instruction to the boys. G.B. (Matt) Arnold had a true teacher's skill in the use of visual aids. We still have in our kitchen the beautifully finished wooden spoon, the last of three pieces of beech through which he demonstrated the potentiality lying initially hidden in the raw material. The point, of course, was easily taken. Much harder and given to most of us more profoundly to ponder was the assertion by the Pentecostal minister, with such radiant sincerity that one could not even suppose him to be speaking metaphorically, that his sins had been washed away in the blood of his Saviour and that the same could happen to all of us. Clearly the man was neither lying nor mad; how, then, were we with our more materially limited perceptions to recieve this truth, then, take it into our own beings? How those older boys, wrestling with 'O' level French, wished they could recieve one small whiff of that gift of tongues which to him was so real.

Only a few Sundays after this utterance and contrasting thus more sharply with it was the appearance of the monk, whose visit I recount in some detail simply because I so remember it, such as its impact. Pehaps presumptously, I had written to the Abbot of Ampleforth, now Cardinal Basil Hume, to ask if he would join us one Sunday. Declining most courteously he had offered one of his bretheren in his stead. On the appointed day there arrived, early, a tall, youngish man - in his thirties, at a guess - in a small and ancient car and a well worn plain grey suit. I had expected, I think, an older character, solemn and sere, habited like Friar Tuck. Being a little uncertain how to address him I could only ask directly. "I'm called Brother Gregory at Ampleforth," he said, "...just Gregory, if you like." I told him our boys were an intelligent lot, capable of handling abstractions if such he had a mind to offer them, but that they would be more interested in him as a person if he was prepared to be questioned on his beliefs and motivations. He said he would wish nothing better than to take his lead from us. Knowing how Anglican clergy go into deep personal prayer during the hymn that precedes their sermon I asked him if he would like a bit of privacy to prepare himself. He said he would appreciate that so I showed him into the psychiatrist's room just behind my garage. Some twenty minutes later I went to tell him that the school was assembled and ready for him...and found him fast asleep. (The point of this observation will appear later). Introducing him to the school I read a few sentences from the Rule of St. Benedict and then let the discussion follow or, rather, questions mostly from the boys to which he gave the most satisfying, direct and simple answers. He recounted briefly how he had been drawn to the communal life of Prinknash, near Gloucester, finding the quality of taht life enhanced rather than diminshed by the submergence of self in the discipline of the order. No it did not distress him that he owned nothing; on the contrary, it freed him. "What about that suit you're wearing?" "It isn't mine. The community has a few old suits to lend us when we come out like this." Silence for a moment...then, "Ere, Greg. What about the vow of chastity, don't you find that difficult?" He leant back in his chair looking thoughtfully at the ceiling and then, in the same quiet tone as for all the other answers, he replied "By God, yes, I do."

Total sympathy of the boys; indeed of us all. He described a typical day at Ampleforth. Besides the monastic offices from Lauds at dawn to Compline in the late evening and perhaps the night office as well, he had a full teaching commitment in the school. When asked what he found most difficult about being a monk he said, "Well, I suppose I have to say sheer fatigue." We ended up feeling that this man was rare and special not by virtue of any studied sanctity but for a kind of serene and simple humainty and a complete dedication to something outside himself.

Two or three times, I recall, we took the boys to local churches instead of holding our usual Meeting in school. With a minibus, an old ambulance and a few cars we could offer the boys a choice either of an Anglican church in Thirsk or Kirby Wiske or even Ripon Cathedral or the Methodist or Roman Catholic churches in Thirsk. So far from insisting that each boy on these occassions should attend the church of his customary denomination, if any had one, I positively encouraged them to take the opportunity to see how other people worshipped. I appreciate that this could be open to objection and I claim no virtue for it; I am merely reporting how things were, in this respect, in my time at Breckenbrough. I hope that my readers who were with me then will find that these recollections of mine, as far as they go, accord fairly well with their own.

I have never felt confident that a sensitivity to spiritual values is best inculcated in the young by the repetition of dogmas and rites of this or that religious system...but notby their rejection, either. What I should have wished my boys to discover, feel, and accept was that systems and fellowship are respectable supports to spiritual and psychic health as a ruler is an aid to drawing straight lines, and that a ruler marked in inches is not a whit less straight than one marked in centimetres. As for the mystery of the truly religious experience I have felt that I could not do better than encourage an attitude of curiosity and search.

"Console-toi, tu ne me chercherais pas si tu ne m'avais trouvé."

For myself, I take comfort from E.B. Castle. "It is not so important that we shold succeed as that we should be seen to have tried."