Meeting Ezekiel - A Summit Reflection
At the heart of SENT Summit 2025, faith and enterprise collided in ways that continue to ripple out for those who attended. For SENT member Doug Wilson, the week at Notre Dame became a meeting point of Scripture, place, and community.
Anchored by Notre Dame’s sacred spaces and enriched by SENT’s circle of Catholic leaders, Doug’s words offer both poetry and conviction: that faith is not a private matter, but something meant to stand tall in public, like the Word of Life mural presiding over campus.
The vision stuns; I fall beneath its weight,
Unable to rise until new breath is given.
Not strength my own, but gift that comes from heaven,
A wind that lifts me, bids my heart be straight.
The charge is clear: be faithful, not to fate,
For fruit is not the measure I am driven.
My call is to bear witness, wholly riven,
To stand and speak, though walls resist or hate.
I see it marked in stone and dome of gold,
In spire that points where holiness takes form,
Reminding me the sacred dwells in place.
And with companions, virtuous, strong, yet bold,
I join their labor through both calm and storm,
Each person honored, bearing heaven’s grace.
Doug Wilson
September 2025
Accompanying Note
This sonnet grew out of three things that collided for me last week—my time in Ezekiel 1–2, being at Notre Dame, and gathering with a circle of friends at the SENT Summit.
Ezekiel’s vision is almost too much to take in: the heavens open, God’s glory blazes, and he collapses. He can’t even move until “the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet.” That line won’t let me go. He couldn’t stand on his own. Then comes the call: “Stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.” And the assignment? Speak God’s words to a rebellious people, “whether they listen or fail to listen.” The weight isn’t in the results. It’s in the obedience.
That lands close to home. In investing, writing, or building community, the ground often feels hard and unyielding. Sometimes what I’m saying or creating doesn’t seem to stick. But I’m reminded again: it’s not about outcomes. It’s about showing up, faithfully, to the One who sends.
Walking Notre Dame’s campus while I was sitting with this text made it come alive in a new way. Under the golden dome, in the basilica’s shadow, I kept thinking: holiness isn’t just inward or private—it takes shape in place, in stone and spire, in community that’s built to last. Ezekiel’s vision came in exile, yet it rooted him. Notre Dame gave me that same sense of anchoring.
And then the SENT Summit brought another layer. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders who are trying to live faithfully in exile, I saw the words I’d been reading come off the page. Not “people” in the abstract, but persons, each bearing the Imago Dei, each weaving mercy and truth into the marketplace. Together we stand, Spirit-lifted, commissioned to build and to speak—whether others listen or not.
Accompanying Art
The Word of Life mural at Notre Dame
Why this art with the sonnet? Well, it isn’t just the size of it, but where it is. It’s not tucked away in a chapel or corner of campus; it stretches across the library, the place where a person —a student—walks every day, lugging books and coffee. Christ with arms lifted, right there in the middle of ordinary life.
That’s what connects for me with the sonnet. I don’t rise on my own. I’m lifted, held up, and then sent out to speak. The mural makes that visible—the great figure above, but also the crowd below, a whole procession of persons, not a faceless crowd. Each one matters, each one bearing the Imago Dei. It’s a reminder that witness is never solitary.
Another thing is how anchored it is. You can’t miss it—it presides over the heart of campus. That felt like a nudge for me: the work I’m called to do—it’s not meant to stay hidden or private. It has to live in public, in places where persons actually are. Just like that mural, it has to be unavoidable.
SENT unites Catholic founders, CEOs, and business leaders in a trusted, thoroughly vetted community.
Surrounded by peers who share your values and vision, you’ll find the mentorship and coaching needed to scale your impact.
