Satire offers wisdom on financial, spiritual growth
Friday September 18 10:39 AM EDT
By Judith Schoolman
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tell Deepak Chopra and the Beardstown Ladies to take a hike. Put
Anthony Robbins, M. Scott Peck, Jack Canfield and all the other profit prophets in the dust bin.
You want to get rich? Forget about them and make God your broker.
Following Brother Tycoon's 7-1/2 laws of spiritual and financial growth to get rich and get into
heaven is a lot easier than passing a camel through the eye of a needle.
Brother Ty, a member of the Order of Saint Thaddeus, lives at the Monastery of Cana in upstate
New York, which has for years been making undrinkable wine. The order's fortunes were strained
recently by an ''unfortunate incident'' when the pope got ill after drinking some Cana wine.
A subsequent investigation found the wine, the monastery's sole source of income, was rife with
''impurities.'' In any case, it was so bad no store anywhere would carry it. Forget about taste, what
about its strange orange tinge?
Thus begins ''God is my Broker'' (Random House), a riotously funny, convoluted satire on the world
of self-help books, financial you-can-do-its, insider trading, international commerce, the Catholic
church, sports and the television mini-series based on the novel ''The Thorn Bird.''
DON'T STEAL THIS BOOK
Lest you believe, as some readers have, that the words of wisdom are indeed gospel, here are 1-1/2
of Brother Ty's laws:
The only way to get rich from a get-rich book is to write one. Or buy this one.
Brother Ty, who found himself at the monastery after some disastrous turns as a heavy-drinking
stock trader, is the invention of authors Christopher Buckley and John Tierney, who claim to know a
thing or two about wanting to make (but not necessarily about actually making) money.
The idea was spawned a couple of years ago by the two, who have been best friends since their days
at Yale University.
''We were talking about money, the condition of American literature and why we were not on the
best seller list,'' Tierney told Reuters in an interview.
Tierney, who writes a column for The New York Times magazine, and Buckley, author of the satire
''Thank You for Smoking'' and a contributor to The New Yorker, saw big bucks in spiritual self-help
or financial self-help books. But a quick trip to a book store showed ''we were way behind the
curve.''
Already topping the charts were books by the Beardstown Ladies and M. Scott Peck and Deepak
Chopra's ''Creating Affluence.'' They could not compete with all of them, so they decided to divide
and conquer.
Tierney, in New York, and Buckley, in Washington, worked on the book over the telephone before
heading to their respective day jobs. The project was originally intended to be a short satire, but it
grew. ''Things fell into place,'' Tierney said.
Buckley and Tierney, both Catholics, said the humor, which could strike some as being just this side
of heretical, got a nod of approval from New York's Cardinal John O'Connor, who read their Prayer
of the Prodigal Caller at a public event.
KEEP GOD'S PRIVATE NUMBER IN SPEED DIAL
In the prayer, Brother Ty asks, ''O Lord, Creator of the sky and the cables that gird earth. ... Teach
me to prioritize all my communications, business and personal, so that when day is done, there will be
no urgent calls left unmade. And may I always keep Thy private number programmed on my speed
dial.''
Asked if he thought the religious satire could be deemed offensive, Tierney said, ''We were hoping it
would be denounced and help our sales.''
The Brothers of Cana, questing for the almighty buck, turn the monastery into a theme park, build a
Cana Cask-ade water slide, make infomercials, peddle re-bottled Chilean wine as their own and sell
T-shirts that read, ''My parents went to Mount Cana and all they got me was this firkin T-shirt.''
Then they find themselves dealing with the FBI, Italian gangsters and, most importantly, Mike
Wallace of the ''60 Minutes'' TV news magazine.
Do they find financial salvation? Will their wine turn red? What is this about ''The Thorn Birds''? And
what is a firkin?
''God Is My Broker'' is too much fun to read to give anything away. But here are the 7-1/2 laws:
-- If God phones, take the call.
-- God loves the poor but that does not mean he wants you to fly coach.
-- As long as God knows the truth it does not matter what you tell your customers.
-- Money is God's way of saying thanks.
-- Money won't make you happy unless you spend it.
-- He who casts the first stone theoretically wins.
-- The only way to get rich from a get-rich book is to write one. Or buy this one.
And by the way, a firkin is a 36-liter barrel.
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