What does it mean that I go to my computer – to check email, Facebook, to jot a few notes to myself for a future blog post or to check a quick fact – every single time I walk by it? I am programmed to open my computer before picking up the phone to call someone or even to turn my head and engage with the people around me, my family. Working – or rather, being on my computer – has become a release valve, a decompression, something I do when I feel stressed or don’t know what else to do. It’s become a filler, and of course at times, a function of distraction. Rather than sitting quietly with myself, calling my grandmother or wrapping myself up in my husband’s arms, I am computer bound.

Coupled with my habit of nose down into digital data, I notice that I am uncomfortable receiving social fabric* actions, such as my neighbor shoveling our sidewalk last week. I was so uncomfortable that I paced around the house seeking relief, challenging myself not to call out my window to tell him to stop. Stop helping me! If you do, then we are actually in community, and then what? I owe you something? But what? What is the perfect exchange for this momentous gift? (He knew how hard it was for me shovel with my three year old around and my husband working all the time.) I don’t have cash to give right now and that seems easiest (see Jen Cohen’s 10/11/09 blog post Creating a Culture of Sufficiency that attends to currency). Beer? Cookies? A smile? My friendship? What?!

I think this is what scares me about the social fabric conversation. The relationship part. The not knowing how to be in that level of giving and receiving where the rules are not set, but rather they are felt, they are discussed, they are generated as you go and mutual understanding arises, (or the exchange dissolves). The rules become understood over time, and until you know, there can be a kind of awkwardness. Kind of like when I went the “wrong way” down a parking lot circular and got unfriendly gestures from about five cars of people. There were no arrows or signs, but I had broken some in-town club rule. I was in a suburb of Boston, a wealthy one, and I came away jaded, grateful I lived in the city where the rules made sense, because I understood them!

In our work to usher the truth and promise of sufficiency into the world, attending to social fabric will be a key focus. I don’t yet know what it will take to restore the social fabric of my own life, never mind the culture at large. For now, I am guessing it takes one relationship at a time. Starting with those around us first, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, municipalities… small systems of connection that will web out from sheer strength and fortitude, (see Permaculture Principal 9: Use Small and Slow Solutions in 12/23/09 blog post Beyond Green: Permaculture). Small gestures of allowing my neighbor to shovel and then pausing to chat next chance. I am clearly going to have to start with myself, my own discomfort and awkwardness, and in moments of stress or longing, resist the call of my computer’s hum and head for a warm body.

*Roger Burton, adviser to Seven Stones, has been talking a lot about social fabric as a key principal to sufficiency, how humans relate to each other and the assumptions that inform those relationships.