Ethan Hawke credited as playing...
Rev. Ernst Toller
- Reverend Ernst Toller: Courage is the solution to despair, reason provides no answers. I can't know what the future will bring; we have to choose despite uncertainty. Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously, Hope and despair. A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: Now Michael, I can promise you that whatever despair you feel about bringing a child into this world cannot equal the despair of taking a child from it.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: Despair is a development of pride so great that it chooses one's certitude rather than admit God is more creative than we are.
- [first lines]
- Reverend Ernst Toller: I have decided to keep a journal. Not in a word program or digital file, but in longhand, writing every word out so that every inflection of penmanship, every word chosen, scratched out, revised, is recorded. To set down all my thoughts and the simple events of my day factually and without hiding anything. When writing about oneself, one should show no mercy. I will keep this diary for one year; 12 months. And at the end of that time, it will be destroyed. Shredded, then burnt. The experiment will be over.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: The man who says nothing always seems more intelligent. Why couldn't I just keep silent?
- Reverend Ernst Toller: Some are called for their gregariousness, some are called for their suffering. Others are called for their loneliness.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: I despise you. I despise what you bring out in me. Your concerns are petty. You are a stumbling block.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: Well, somebody has to do something! It's the Earth that hangs in the balance.
- Reverend Joel Jeffers: Well what if this is His plan? What if we just can't see it?
- Reverend Ernst Toller: You think God wants to destroy his creation?
- Reverend Joel Jeffers: He did once. For 40 days and 40 nights.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: The desire to pray itself is a type of prayer. How often we ask for genuine experience when all we really want is emotion.
- Michael: You believe in martyrdom, Reverend?
- Reverend Ernst Toller: I'm not sure I know what you mean.
- Michael: The Saints of God, the early Christians who wouldn't renounce their faith? The missionaries who were attacked in the fields of the Lord. Do you believe that they died for a purpose?
- Reverend Ernst Toller: I do.
- Michael: Well, every week, activists are killed trying to protect the environment.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: Discernment intersects with Christian life at every moment. Discernment. Listening and waiting for God's wish what action must be taken.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: I know that nothing can change and I know there is no hope. Thomas Merton wrote this.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: There's something growing inside Mary, something as alive as a tree, surely. As an endangered species. Something full of the beauty and mystery of nature.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: Every act of preservation is an act of creation. Everything preserved renews creation. It's how we participate in creation.
- Reverend Ernst Toller: Maybe I shouldn't care about whether people like me. Did Jesus worry about being liked?