Georgia poet and author Rupert Fike and I lived in the San Francisco Bay area during the 1970s in a time of social renaissance and spiritual awakening. He was with a core group community of some 300 young activists and idealists. The earliest beginnings of this community go back to San Francisco and a weekly meeting called Monday Night Class.
Young people of the counterculture movement would gather weekly to discuss spiritual values and the vision of a new society. The focal point and facilitator for these meetings was Stephen Gaskin, a creative writing teacher from San Francisco State University who left his position to play an active role in the changing times. Gaskin was invited by a group of ministers to hold a series of talks in churches throughout the United States.
Over 200 others came along, forming a line of 60 school buses on a transcontinental odyssey that became known as “The Caravan.” The Caravan ended in San Francisco, leaving its participants with the question, “What next?”…