Right or Wrong?

By Travis Andersen, Associated Press

CHICHESTER, N.H.—A pastor in this quiet, picturesque New England town thought he was doing the Christian thing when he took in a convicted child killer who had served his time but had nowhere to go.

But some neighbors of the Rev. David Pinckney vehemently disagree, one even threatening to burn his house down after officials could find no one else willing to take 60-year-old Raymond Guay.

More than 200 town residents on Tuesday packed a selectmen's meeting, the first since news of Guay's arrival broke over the weekend. Most called for Guay's removal, claiming repeatedly that their children couldn't sleep and were afraid to play outside.

Lindsay Holden told the selectmen that she has met with state and federal officials and has pressed them to move Guay somewhere else for the sake of her children.

"I wouldn't be a good mom if I stood by and did nothing," she said.

Pinckney, pastor of the evangelical River of Grace Church a dozen miles west in Concord, and Guay, who was paroled in September after 35 years behind bars, did not attend the meeting.

Guay already had a criminal record when he was charged in 1973, at age 25, with abducting and murdering a 12-year-old boy in Nashua. Authorities said he planned to sexually assault the boy, whose body was clad only in socks and undershorts.

Guay pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to up to 25 years. He kidnapped a Concord couple after briefly escaping from the nearby state prison in 1982 and was sent to a federal prison in California, where he stabbed an inmate in 1991, court records show.

He was released from a federal prison in West Virginia in September after New Hampshire officials lost a bid to keep him incarcerated as a dangerous sexual predator under federal law.

After New Hampshire officials protested his relocation to Manchester last fall, Guay went to a halfway house in Connecticut. A judge recently ordered him to spend the remaining 2 1/2 years of his parole in New Hampshire.

Two rooming houses turned Guay away when he returned to Concord last week.

A Concord prison chaplain contacted Pinckney, who agreed to take Guay in after meeting him and clearing it with his wife and their four children living at home, ages 13 to 18. Their oldest son is away at college. Guay is staying with the family while he looks for a job and place to live.

The local selectmen, before they heard from residents, voted unanimously to ask federal probation officer Thomas Tarr to move Guay. Selectman Richard DeBold stressed that his board has no legal authority in the matter.

Tarr told residents he had to comply with a federal judge's order to place Guay in New Hampshire. He said Guay has agreed to wear a monitoring device while staying with Pinckney's family. He blamed "inflammatory" media coverage for the flap.

Several residents said they doubted the system could save their children if Guay snapped.

Pinckney did not return calls or answer the door when a reporter visited his house, but he assured the town in an open letter published Tuesday that Guay poses no threat.

"We would not be doing this if we thought we were endangering our town, neighbors or children," he wrote.

Though Guay "has committed some horrendous crimes in his past," he has been on "a very different course" since a religious transformation in 1993, Pinckney said.

Pinckney has told Guay he may only leave the house in a car with another adult and can live with the family for no more than two months.

When residents asked what would happen if Guay didn't find a job or a new place by then, Tarr said he couldn't guarantee Guay would leave, adding that authorities have begun scouting two or three new locations for him outside Chichester. He would not elaborate.

Resident Greg Steelman stood out from the crowd Tuesday, telling his neighbors to tone down the hysteria surrounding Guay.

"Our kids probably have a better chance of getting hit by a drunk driver than getting killed by this guy," he said.

Another resident, Brandon Giuda, urged neighbors to pipe down and vote for pro-gun and pro-death penalty candidates if they really wanted to protect their families.

Many residents said Chichester, population about 2,200, is too small and rural to be suitable for Guay.

Conrad Mandsager, of Nottingham, just southeast of Chichester, disagreed. In the 1980s, Mandsager worked for the Prison Fellowship, a faith-based group that helps parolees find jobs, and took a violent felon into his home with his family of five. He said the man got a job through the Prison Fellowship and turned his life around.

"You create more opportunities for problems by putting (convicts) in a larger city where there's no accountability," Mandsager said by phone. He said he expects better results in a home like Pinckney's, "where there's accountability and care and love for the guy."

Gooses

Soren Kirkegaard wrote a wonderful parable entitled “The Tame Geese.” In the parable, Kierkegaard begins, “Suppose it was so that geese could talk - then they had so arranged it that they could also have their religious worship, their divine worship.” He then goes on to describe the plump geese gathering for church. As they sat, one of the ganders would rise to preach, “What a lofty destiny the geese had, what a high goal the Creator had set before the geese.” The feathered pastor would extol that “by the aid of their wings they could fly away to distant regions, blessed climates, where properly they were at home, for here they were only strangers.” The geese would excitedly honk and flap their wings at the thought of their destiny and high calling. “So it was every Sunday. And as soon as the assembly broke up, each waddled home to his own affairs.” Kierkegaard concludes, “So with the divine worship of Christendom. Man also has wings, he has imagination….” Are you going to walk or fly?

Frank Warren compiled an assortment of anonymous postcards which were sent to My Secret (New York: Regan, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2006). These were confessions and observations sent in and then assembled in a book. They provide further proof that all of us are broken and all of us want to be known. Here are some of the submissions:

“When you were in the ICU I took your picture. I wanted you to see what you looked like, so you might go into rehab. I never showed you the picture, you never went into rehab, and I never forgave myself. I am so sorry.”

“Though I’m afraid you’ll never speak to me again I’m pretty sure I’m better off that way.”

“My Mom put a star on the calendar for every day I haven’t cut myself. I don’t deserve 5 of those stars.”

“I forgive the man who raped me.”

“I’ve been trying to be you for so long that I forgot what its like to be me.”

If you want to see more, you can go to http://postsecret.blogspot.com/.

What is your secret?

Why do you have to keep it?

Klaatu. Barada. Nikto.

“I don’t know what to say?”

“What am I supposed to tell them?”

“How should I say this?”

“I need to find a card that is just right.”

At funerals, in conflicts or in other times of stress, we struggle to find the right words. Obsessing over the right phrasing or the exact expression, it is almost as though we are writing a magic spell. Somehow we believe that disaster will result if we get one word wrong. Words are powerful, but they are not as potent as we believe. In themselves they cannot ease sorrow and they cannot change the heart. What gives words power is the speaker. In times of crisis or grief, what matters most is not what you say, but who you are. Your focus and involvement make statement enough. A silent friend standing alongside speaks more eloquently than any words could.