My Alternative Lifestyle

It's a love that has wings, a countercultural calling that turns restraint into liberation. Ron Belgau.

My eyebrows furrowed with curiosity when I saw the article’s title (see above). It certainly caught my attention. Never mind the fact that the article was written by someone I know, which was why I wanted to read it in the first place, but the title certainly piqued my curiosity even further.

Ron Belgau, my friend who wrote it, hardly seemed to me in my mind the kind of person you’d associate with those living an ‘alternative’ lifestyle. Ron – alternative? Is the Pope a Mormon? But of course, that depends on what your notion of an ‘alternative’ lifestyle is.

Also published in a print version of the Notre Dame Magazine in the USA, the article is essentially about his story, albeit briefly: about his love of planes, of flying and anything aeronautical, about two of his friends – one current, one in the distant past, about his journey from being a non-Catholic making fun of Catholic sexual ethics and a hopeful gay rights activist to instead, a practising Catholic, from being someone who was falling for another guy yet again for the umpteenth time into someone who is committed to a somewhat ‘unpopular’ and ‘non-mainstream’ way of life. As Ron writes of himself during his younger years -

“An educated, postmodern person would no more become a Catholic than he would join the Flat Earth Society.”

But, as Ron puts it, "God has a way of throwing curveballs" - because he has since gone from being a non-Catholic to a practising one.



Ron and Mark doing pre-flight checks


Ron begins his story in My Alternative Lifestyle with him doing the pre-flight checks on a Cessna. And I am pleased to post the above photo taken of Ron and Mark doing exactly just that, when they took me on an island-hopping trip (well, intra-island, in any case, from memory) around the San Juan Islands when I visited Ron in the USA last year.

I’ve been on helicopters, Cessnas, Fokkers, Airbus planes, and Boeing planes of all varied shapes and sizes just to name a few. And you’d think I’d be used to flying. And in a way, I am used to flying. And I don’t mind it at all and I do enjoy flying so long as I don’t get queasy or airsick, which, unfortunately, I did, during the flight to the San Juan Islands. But that is another story which doesn’t need telling.

Without further ado, click here to take you to Ron Belgau’s article My Alternative Lifestyle if you're interested in finding out more about his story.