Casket-making 101

How’s this for an idea: What if you began your College life spending two weeks making custom caskets, carving the divine mercy prayer into its oak sides and fashioning an inlaid cross on the lid? What if the smell of wood dust and the sound of hammers on pegs replaced the odor of alcohol and the noise of demonic music? What if the rhythm of sanding smoothed the way for the interior silence necessary for an encounter with God? What if the serious reality of meditating on death with your new friends around a fire in the evening replaced “ice-breakers?” What if no false promises and delusions of grandeur were offered, only the perennial counsel to keep death ever before one’s eyes?