A common feature at work in all of this living is that things are given and things are recieved.  Breath, rest, words, food, excrement, handiwork, sensations, ideas, bodies, and intentions--each of them, the very stuff of life, are given and each of them are recived.  Life is this giving.

A guiding axiom: life is givenness

A theological version of this axiom: life is grace.

Grace names what comes as a gift.  In short, grace names what is given.  Or, more precisely, as Jean-Luc-Marion puts it, grace names the givenness of whatever is given and received.

Givennes names the giving and receiving that constitute life.  It names our interdependence.  It names a dynamic process of exchange, of giving and receiving, acceptance and conversion, that is always already dependent on things outside of itself.  here, to be alive, to give and receive, is to be in an open relation of interdependence with the world for food, air, words, materials, sensations, and companionship.
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The primary difficulty faced in approaching life in terms of grace is that grace so easily slips the knot of our attention.  Our preoccupation with what is given and received so easily eclipses any awareness of its having been given, of its givenness.  How easy it is to receive a gift from someone and, in light of its heft, shine, and appeal, forget that it is a gift.  How difficult it is to keep its gifted-ness at the forefront of our attention.

Addressing ourselves to the givenness of life (and not just to what is given), will require a kind of focused attention that we don't generlaly employ.  We will have to attend to the immediacy of life with a kind of awareness that we rarely bring to bear.  We will have to shift down a few gears, ease off the gas, and be patient enough to linger with the given-ness of the present moment.  If we are racing off to somewhere else, we will see only what is given and its givnness will fail to appear.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 4-5

Our vision of others is distorted, because we see them only through the refracted image of ourselves. We play at love, but perform it immaturely, childishly. Paul doesn’t really explain how being able to “know, even as we are known” is related to enduring charity. But in that moment of really seeing Dwayne, I started to understand that once we see each other, we love readily, even inevitably. And real love–Christ’s–comes, undeserved and even unbidden, as a gift of clear sight. Because charity is a gift of God, and not an act of will, it bears all things–even human contradiction; it can come to us even in anger, disgust, or fear, as the infant Christ came to a dark, forgotten corner to dwell among the beasts and his beastly and beloved human kin.

Kristine Haglund, www.bycommonconsent.com, "To See Face to Face"

"A...paradox is evident in the prophet's admonition, that we "feast upon [Christ's] love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever."  Why should we need firm minds to feast upon love?  Like all gifts, love can be hard to recieve.  As children we welcome presents and affection with the same ready heart and hand, but we tend to lose knack as we grow older and more self-sufficient.  Love may be a heavy burden because of pride; we want to be self-made men and women, paying our own way, and are ashamed of our need.  Perhaps we are made to see our own littleness, by the great chasm that opens up between our merit and the gift.  Or perhaps we are genuinely ill ast ease, as one who knows at what great cost the gift has come.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 74-75

The history of the church is very complex, very mingled. I want you to know how aware I am of that fact. These days there are so many people who think loyalty to religion is benighted, if it is not worse than benighted. I am aware of that, and I know the charges that can be brought against the churches are powerful. And I know, too, that my own experience of the church has been, in many senses, sheltered and parochial. In every sense, unless it really is a universal and transcendent life, unless the bread is the bread and the cup is the cup everywhere, in all circumstances, and it is a time with the Lord in Gethsemane that comes for everyone, as I deeply believe...It all means more than I can tell you, so you must not judge what I know by what I find words for....I hope you will put yourself in the way of the gift.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 114)