Articles About Rachel

Rachel Corrie — for many if not most of us in the Lincoln Options community — truly is representative of all things bright and beautiful — of things that are good and things that are hopeful in our lives. She represents the best that Lincoln Options has to offer the community — and the world.

It is easy to hear in the stories of her the wonderful heart committed to changing the world for the better. It is easy to be inspired by her writings — our opportunity to share again in the care, the concern, the creativity, and the vision of her passionate soul and her hopeful, committed being. It is easy to realize that the world was a better place for all of us and our children for her having visited us here.

She called for an end to world hunger for children when she was but an elementary school child herself. She championed the causes of and opportunities for the disadvantaged and the less-privileged as part of the creative orchestration of her life. She touched deeply many of the lives that she came in contact with.

Yes, it is easy now to see what we had — and to miss her — remembering how uniquely wonderful and how beautifully rare she was — this Rachel Corrie — in our world.

But all of it is not easy. Many things, in fact, are very hard.

It is hard to come to terms with the fact that as she stood courageously challenging the legitimacy of the intent of the Israeli bulldozer in Gaza — that she did so not for herself but for others — the children of Palestine and the world. It is hard to escape the sickening realization that as she stood there in the name of the children — that she was virtually a child herself.

And it is hard to forgive oneself for the fact that as she stood there — a child face-to-blade against an enormous and lethal bulldozer — that she stood there alone. She knew what she was doing. She knew the risks. We just wish that some of us could have been there with her. Perhaps if we had been — she would still be alive. And if not — at least she would not have died alone.

With the loss of one whom we believed to be so consummately one of us and the on-going events in the Middle East and Iraq — it has been a very long Month of March, indeed.