They collect for everything at my church in Co. Wicklow but not poppies.
Which is all part of the antipathy in some quarters in Ireland towards Remembrance Sunday.
Because while it was born out of the trenches and is predominantly associated with the First World War.
It also covers the of British and Commonwealth conflicts, and there it jars with Irish nationalist history.
Only the Irish, including my two Fallen Donegal Great-Uncles, died in their tens of thousands in the Great War, both Catholic and Protestant, North and South.
So no poppy collection then, but two, count them, offertory collections at Mass.
Which brings me to how they do offertories over there.
It was on my trip to Ieper on my World War I Battlefields with G Adventures www.gadventures.com.
To Flanders www.visitflanders.com and the Somme https://www.visit-somme.com/great-war that I saw how they did it.
The Flems in Ieper, for example, send their wee old stooped women in to collect your money, in their white robes.
Where they carry small pots with felt at the bottom.
Why felt? Well, I’m thinking that it’s along the lines of the Rev. Ian Paisley’s Silent Collection.
Where coins would make a sound.
There’s another aspect to offertory plates (they’re reed baskets at our church) that bothers me.
The public shame, the sniffs and withering eyes when you make your contribution.
And a word to the wise here, don’t sit by the aisle where you will be first to put in your donations.
Then there’s the question about what you should give.
Here I’m going to pass the buck, and that’s probably not even enough, and say that Islam does it better.
By requiring that you donate 2.5% of your income (Zakat) to alms-giving.
Which is probably what they’re saying here in their Call to Prayer which you get constant reminders of when you travel.
In Istanbul Wham bam, thank you Hamam with http://www.turkishairlines https://visit.istanbul.
And Jordan Petra and the sands of time and http://www.visitjordan.com.
