I talked yesterday about character and how focusing on it should lead us to think more about who we are than what we do, because who we are should shape what we do. As I've been contemplating the Hebrew book of Proverbs lately, I've come to see how carefully it builds on this.  In proverb after proverb, it presents character as something born of two things:  listening and learning.  It invites us to listen, to listen to the voice of integrity and reason, the call of probity and prudence, the urgings of God.  It asks us to learn from observing how when we listen to these voices, we grow increasingly able to live according to what they tell us.  As we listen, we learn, and as we learn, we listen even more.
     We shape our character by how well we listen, how well we listen to voices, not ours, but the voices of the world and, ultimately, the voice of God.  We do not listen to our selfishness.  We learn from seeing how listening to these voices--not our own--allow us to hear them even more clearly.  We see how much we need our existence and its maker to teach us how to live it.  Our character is the fruit of walking with circumspection and humility, of walking with respect for what life, and God, have to teach us.  We begin our walk as strangers, strangers to life, strangers to God, and we end our walk as friends, friends with life, and friends with God.  We begin with a character given to grasping and overlooking, and we end with a character bent to listening and learning, listening to learn what we do not know, learning that listening to what we do not know is to learn that life is ultimately, simply, to listen.
     There's an eternity to hear.