ETHIOPIAN FOIBLES

The Kenya mission trip was fantastic. We had not gone to 'bring Jesus' to them, we had gone to engage East African liberation groups, Christian or not. Make food links to combat famine. Our timing was poor, Kenya was in the middle of a military coup which culminated in the Wagalla massacre in Wajir county the following year, where thousands of civilians had been killed.

We'd left Kenya committed to going to Ethiopia the next year, to engage local Christian organizations in famine relief there. But upon our return from Kenya even the Reed Street board had concerns. One was simple safety for otherwise garden variety American activists heading into world trouble spots. Alice said I was addicted to danger. But the series of sermons I returned with seemed to galvanize the congregation. Our givings went up. Designated givings for our overseas missions went up. So we started planning for the mission trip to Ethiopia the next year.

Where, of course, travel arrangements were done through Dupont Circle Travel Agency. Philip had subsequently saved us when all our arrangements for Ethiopia had to be changed at the last minute. We were going six months early, in November 1983, not in 1984. His travel experience saved us.

Alice was well into her pregnancy by November and she suggested that Dale go in my stead. But I was the link between our regional, American peace group and the East Africa rights & famine people. It had to be me going. Besides, I told Alice, what could go wrong? We'd be in a large group of westerners.

Adding to this, all through the summer and well into the Fall of 1983, Paige spent a lot of time either at the church, at the downtown food pantry or at our house. Man oh man, did she do homework. She was obsessive about pleasing her teachers, pleasing me and Alice, and trying to figure out what was what with her parents. We'd had many talks. When it came to raw information about her parents, I was just as flummoxed then has I had ever been.

Sometimes it was as if she was sourcing **me** for information. But what possible info could I have had?

Me, I was having trouble figuring her out. I mean, the big secret was out, was it not? At its worst, Mr & Mrs Jennings committed what amounted to non-violent industrial espionage, only that this 'type' of espionage somewhat matched my own goals and objectives in engaging in international rights work. In being critical of the Reagan Administration.

At the big send-off for our Ethiopian trip, Philip showed up at the church wishing me well. That was the addictive part - his sincerity made me wonder about my own senses which at the same time feared them, him especially. The old sense of craziness resurfaced. Once again, I accessed the back of my brain that if I, an adult, was addicted to this, what was it like growing up in a home where lies, all be they somewhat necessary lies, were the currency of the place?

Before getting my attention taken by the dozens of other well-wishers, I said to Philip, "Look, it's none of my business, but Paige seems sad these days. Maybe the three of us can sit down again when I get back." He assured me that they would love that.

ALWAYS CHECK THE GAS GAUGE

Did I mention what could go wrong? When in Ethiopia, a fellow international peace & famine advocate (I think it was Al Woods, no relation to Dale) and I made a snap decision to take one of the Jeeps and head over to one of the villages which had, the previous year, been violently searched by military. Because we were white, we felt we traveled with that veil of privileged protection. So we headed out, with no time to tell anyone else where we were going.

Stupid.

What we didn't count on, was that our white privilege would not protect us from vehicle breakdown. We ran out of gas. The gauge still showed 1/2 a tank, but Al noticed that the gauge had never moved. We had taken one of the more unused and isolated back-roads, and neither he nor I had the wherewithal to figure out how to survive in the bush.

We had driven 30 miles away from our conference site. Ten miles ahead was the village. We were stupid. We tried walking out back to the conference site. Did I say we were stupid? At the washout 2 miles behind us we took the wrong 'fork', which is euphemistic because neither option was particularly recognizable as our route while on foot, nor much of a road to begin with.

But this is not about that. Suffice it to say that I endangered our whole East Africa social-justice mission focus, making two white privileged guys the issue rather than the life issues on the ground. When back home, I had to justify further funding for these missions from both Reed Street Church as well as with the larger American Peace & Famine group initiatives. The full report is available elsewhere: I did not come out looking good. So - let me pivot. Both me and the East Africa justice campaign endured, the final conclusion was that my own stupidity, would not effect any commitment. I was chided, censured, but finally given a full vote of confidence to continue.

Ok, that was that. Onward and upward.

THEY RESPONDED WELL TO THREATS

As for this narrative, I first became aware of the impact this may have had on The Jennings when talking with Alice back home from Addis Ababa. Alice and the church already knew that I was safe by the time I talked with her, but no one back home yet was aware of the circumstances of our disappearance. They left it up to me to confess my stupidity.

Ethiopia was solidly communist by 1983, and had been since Haile Salassie had been deposed in the 1970s. The Ethiopian famine was just getting going in 1983 and would continue for another two years. We didn't know it at the time, but it was only then that the Soviet Union was pulling back from their support of these regimes.

Ok, that's the backstory. Over the phone, I had fully expected Alice, now heavily pregnant with our beloved Claire Louise, to let me have it. Well, she did. But it was muted. Despite the high cost of this overseas call, Alice went silent at her end. Fearing she was going to use more unfavourable language towards me, I let the silence continue. But I eventually said, "Alice, what is it? Please tell me. I can't talk long."

She said, "I may have done something very bad. In relation to the Jennings. I'll tell you about it when…." and then our call was disconnected.

Oh God, now what?

Well, the 'now what?' was that when I'd been missing, Alice had left something with a lawyer, essentially 'in escrow', the information on it exposing the Jennings as Communist spies. She told me that she'd gone over to their house in a panic and had accused them of all sorts of things. She knew that at the time Ethiopia had been a Soviet client state - so what better place to have me eliminated? She told them that if I had shown up dead, the lawyer was to release what she'd supplied to the FBI.

But it had been all my fault. Not theirs. Before getting home, Alice had apologized to Paige, but no one had similarly apologized to Philip and Elizabeth.

So on my return, I booked my first free moment to drive down to Falls Church to apologize unannounced and in person. They were so disarming, it was almost as if they had apologized to me. Elizabeth invited us over for dinner some time in the near future when our two schedules would allow, but she wanted us over before Alice had the baby. Talk about disarming.

DINNER FOR SIX, DINNER FOR SEVEN

But that was not all of it. A week later as we were over there, setting up for dinner, their doorbell rang. Henry jumped up and raced over to the door, quite excited to see their neighbour, a tall strawberry-haired good looking, middle-aged guy. I first thought, he must be every neighbour everyone has in those suburban enclaves. Borrowing lawnmowers, babysitting kids. Driving to and fro from school or dance lessons. Having a beer after work.

He saw that there were guests, so he tried to make excuses. But Henry was having none of it. So Elizabeth said she'd just set another place, a dinner for six became a dinner for seven. That's how they roll in the suburbs, I thought.

They introduced me to him, his name was Stan. They told him that the previous January I had baptised Paige. I was her pastor, which Elizabeth corrected that I was 'their' pastor. Once again, the suburban housewife had shown remarkable and targeted precision with disarming words. Was I really her pastor? Surprisingly, Elizabeth more than once had come by the office conveniently early to pick up Paige, and asked if she and I could talk. So was it me being paranoid? My craziness returned.

It was not about them and their industrial espionage work, or their human rights work, Elizabeth genuinely wanted to talk about herself. And given that it was she seeking me out, the perplexing thing was that she was a tough nut to crack. She was thoughtful, smart, she cared deeply about Paige. But she was an impenetrable wall.

There was a lack of specificity about her. She was exceptionally adroit at steering vague conversations. Again, I needed to remind myself that she had come to me - but my sense of what had ailed Paige growing up in that home was confirmed. I need to repeat, Elizabeth had come to me, and then proceeded to talk in what amounted to artfully crafted circles, although that was not exactly it.

I could see why Paige had called her parents 'liars', but I would have chosen another descriptor. Except don't ask me to settle on one. It was crazy-making. Even when she had come to me. Ok, I'm repeating myself.

AVOIDING A DOUBLE-TAKE AT ALL COSTS

But back to the table. I asked Stan what he did for a living. Without a blink he said, "Oh, I'm FBI, I work in counter intelligence."

It was all I could do to avoid snapping a look at Elizabeth or Philip. They were as calm as a plate of mouse milk. Paige's eyes darted around a bit. Henry broke the silence by saying, "Hey Stan, Pastor Tim once got arrested for chaining himself to a government fence."

Stan looked at me, and said, "Oh. Is that so."

I explained that at our church we believed in social action, peace-building with a healthy dose of Jesus mixed in.

That seemed to end that as conversation. Like farting in an elevator. We spent the rest of the evening helping Elizabeth with the clean-up and dishes, and rehearsing for one another where we were from and how we'd got into our respective professions. Stan talked about going into the FBI, he then only briefly touched on his family's time in St. Louis, he mentioned he was divorced, and, "now I spend my time mooching meals off of neighbours."

Alice had not said much for the rest of the meal after Stan had said what he did for a living. She kept staring at him, then she'd stare at Elizabeth. Elizabeth seemed to be keeping track of who was staring at who. In the car back to Alexandria Alice sat silently.

She then said, "What do you make of it?" I asked her, "Of what?"

She then belaboured the obvious. 'Obvious' as in, the elephant in the room. "An FBI Agent is their neighbour, Tim, but not just any FBI agent." She added, "He specifically said he worked in counter-intelligence. That's spies, Tim!"

Yes, I knew that. My oh my.

Ok, what gives? This is probably a departure from the narrative, but, my oh my, the FBI lives next door. Henry seems to be buddies with the guy. Philip said that he and Stan go to the club for racquetball every so often. They have backyard, neighbourhood barbecues! They drink beer together most evenings.

That's just weird, and for the first time I used one of Dale Woods's expressions: as educated as I was, and as I was getting a reputation as a pastor involved in world justice issues, this was, as Dale would have put it, "way above your pay grade."

On the drive home, Alice confessed to feeling even more guilty. "What if what they're doing is actually in cahoots with our government? What if Agent Beeman is their government 'handler', I mean that's what it's called on TV!"

There was a lot about the Jennings and Paige where at the same time things made both sense and no sense, both at the same time.

But not this one. This was in some other dimension than one where things either made sense or they didn't.

CLAIRE LOUISE

Then in January 1984, all of it changed anyway. Alice gave birth to our cherished Claire Louise. My first thought in looking down at those little eyes was to thank God, and also to double down on work for world peace and justice. Seeing this fragile little thing I thought, "too much is at stake."

One night when both Alice and Claire Louise had settled, I went up to the attic office in the house to catch up on my pastoral diary. Recording my thoughts was essential to my ministry, being able to come back and later review what was going on in my own head with various things.

This is what I wrote about Paige Jennings, who according to the convention I'd adopted in the diary, I'd identified as 'P.J.', but then slipped up by writing the name 'Paige' out in full. "That (the Jennings) are not what they seem is the understatement of the century. Are they monsters? I don't know. But what they did to their daughter I'd have to call monstrous. I've seen sexual abuse, I've seen affairs, but nothing I've seen compares to what P.J. has been through."

What do I think of those words now? Well let me put the 'now' into context. It is now 1994, and Alice, Claire Louise, and our youngest daughter have just returned to the U.S. from a decade in Argentina. I've just finished as the Executive Director of the Argentinian office of the World Council of Churches, a dream position for me. Or should I say, for the first five years the position had been a dream - a return to everything I imagined that Ecuador could have been back in the 1970's. Then in 1989 Argentina had a wild shift of government, and the World Council of Churches became a target of red-baiting in the country. In Buenos Aires, it had been me being accused of being a Soviet agent.

But this narrative is not about that. I have written extensively elsewhere about Argentina and about my final year at Reed Street Church a decade ago.