Barbara's Trip from Woodstock to Foodstock

     She was one of those ’60s people Joni Mitchell sang about, a child of God walking along a road that led to Woodstock. Seeds of goodwill from attending that music festival planted in Barbara Moore’s soul.
     But they lay dormant for years, squelched by life in the corporate fast lane. Then Barbara asked herself what she really wanted. “To get back to the garden.”
     She learned that more than 200,000 children struggle with hunger every day in Colorado. Some receive free or reduced-cost school lunches. But on weekends, they may go hungry. In one family, the kids play a guessing game: “Who’s going to get to eat this weekend?”
     Barbara went into action, and Jeffco Eats was born. Volunteers bag food items and transport them to schools for students to carry home for the weekend.
     Meeting needs doesn’t have to come through an organization. One woman I know watches out for latchkey kids on her block, helping them with loose bike chains. A grandfather runs errands for his daughter so she doesn’t have to haul her preschoolers around. A group of women knit hats for homeless teens.
     The world’s needs can overwhelm me. But I heard a man say, “Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is to stop praying only and to start doing.”
     Good advice. So I’m part of Barbara’s brigade, filling bags with meals for hungry tummies. We’re transforming the idealism of Woodstock into the reality of foodstock.
     Because nobody should be forced to guess who gets to eat this weekend.