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The Abode Of Love: A Memoir

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Kate Barlow is born into a very strange family indeed, but only begins to understand as she gets older how peculiar it is. Growing up in the 1950s in Spaxton, England, on a peaceful estate largely populated by old women, she begins to unravel the mystery of her own family, and finally locates a diary that had been kept almost daily for years. Excerpts from the diary appear at the beginning of each chapter, starting with one from 1948 and ending in one from 1956. During those years Barlow gradually began to discover the extraordinary claim that had been made by her grandfather, who had started out as a Church of England cleric but ended up proclaiming himself the Messiah. This book shows what usually happens to such extraordinary splinter sects as the years pass: they gradually dwindle into obscurity, while using up the considerable financial resources they obtained during the early days. Barlow's book is also instructive about the peculiar position in which someone who claims to be a prophet or Messiah leaves his children and grandchildren: that position is usually a privileged one, but it can also lead to a lifetime of self-deception and emotional pain. Kate Barlow's story, and especially that of her mother, reminded me of the the troubled lives of many of the children of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon (whom I myself once followed, believing him the Messiah) and how some of them turned to drugs or suicide in the aftermath of their father's Messianic claim.