One of my favorite images of home was given to me by the comedian George Carlin in his classic monologue contrasting football and baseball. “Football,” he said, “is a game of territory and aggression.” “In baseball,” Carlin says with that characteristic gleam in his eye, “the goal is to go home. We just want to go home!”
And isn’t that what we all want? Beyond the game, beyond the ceremony, beyond the legal recognition or the rings or the cake — we just want to go home.
In my younger days, in my sophomore year of college, I found myself hitchhiking through Europe one summer. One of the adventures of hitchhiking in those days was that I never knew exactly where I would be on any given night. It might be a hostel, a park, an open field, or even under a bridge. Often, I would be dropped on the outskirts of some small town in Belgium, France, Ireland, Germany, or England just as the sun was going down.
After a meal at a local café or pub, I would walk the streets looking for a park or campsite — anywhere I could bed down, crawl into my sleeping bag, and feel a little respite from the wear and tear of the road. To feel safe again.
As I walked, I would gaze at the cheery lights coming through the windows of the houses I passed and imagine families eating dinner, playing cards, listening to music, laughing, drinking wine, or watching television. At times like these, I was filled with a longing I had never known. I was homeless at that moment, and I was deeply homesick for the comfort that home gives.
It doesn’t matter that most of those homes were likely filled with ordinary stress and daily routines. What mattered was the way those moments marked me. They gave me the gift of understanding home — and what it means to be without it. I vowed then never to take for granted that place of safety and inner peace that I had so glibly assumed was my birthright as a child.
Howard Thurman observed that true home isn’t just a zip code — it’s an inner sanctuary. He called it our “Island of Peace,” the place where life’s frantic rhythms quiet and our spirits rest. “There must always remain,” he wrote, “some place for the singing of angels.” Life, he said, is saved by those moments of transcendence woven into the everyday.
Marriage, in the deepest and most spiritual sense, is the embodiment of that longing for the “island of peace” that Thurman identifies. It is not a concession to loneliness, but a courageous act of love. It says to another:
“I have seen you walking the streets, looking for a place to sleep for the night — and I have been there too. Let’s vow that we will always help each other find that shelter when the night is long and lonely. I will be the twinkling light in the window for you. Will you be that for me? Can we agree to forever walk each other home — whether we’re feeling loving, tired, angry, or filled to the brim with dreams?”
That longing — to be accepted, to belong, to build a life with someone — isn’t the property of just one kind of couple. It belongs to all of us: gay, straight, lesbian, trans, non-binary, queer, old, young, religious, secular — everyone. There’s no need to gatekeep love. As Bishop Tutu said, “In God’s family, there are no outsiders. All are insiders.”
In the last two decades, our cultural understanding of love and marriage has widened. Marriage equality didn’t redefine marriage. It reminded us of what marriage has always meant: two people creating a home, a family, a place to rest and be known.
And yet, that hard-won ground is not safe. Across the country in the first quarter of this century, the rights of LGBTQ+ couples — to marry, to adopt, to simply be — are under renewed attack. That’s not just a political issue. It’s a human one. Because the truth is: everyone deserves to come home. Everyone deserves a place to lay down their name beside another’s and say, this is us — this is love — this is where we belong.
As a scholar of ethical leadership and prophetic tradition, Dr. Walter Fluker often speaks to the deep inner compass that guides our lives. He reminds us that the work of becoming fully human is not just about achievement or status, but about belonging. As Dr. Fluker has said, “When we’re most ourselves, we’re trying to find our way home.”
The late poet Audre Lorde, who described herself as a “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” used her voice as a powerful instrument for liberation and transformation. In her essay, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” she makes the following observation: “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
In the final analysis, home — whether in marriage, community, or spirit — is not reserved for the familiar, but made sacred through welcoming the fullness of others. After all, as George Carlin observed, we all just want to go home. The question is not whether some couples — or some ethnic or religious groups — deserve a place to belong while others do not. The real question is whether we are brave enough to keep building that place — with wide doors, open hands, and a fire burning warmly in the hearth.