Leo F. Buscaglia tells the story:

‘Recently I gave a talk to a group of boys in a school in a California district, and I had a great time with them. The teachers took me for lunch, and when in the afternoon I came back to the boys they told me they had had some trouble. Apparently I had said in my talk that if you want to know a tree, you have to climb it. “Shin up its trunk, sit between its branches, feel the touch of its bark, listen to the wind in its leaves, and then you’ll be able to say that you know the tree.” A boy, coming out of the talk, went straight to a tree in the school garden and climbed it with zest. The director of the school passed that way, saw him and ordered him to climb down, and rusticated him for fifteen days.’

Strictly forbidden to climb trees. It is true that if the boys begin to climb trees indiscriminately in the school garden, soon there will not be a green leaf left on it. The director has to protect the institution’s property, and forbids the adventure. We understand his motives. But we are also saddened by the bureaucratic barrier that deprives the trees of the boys’ embrace, and the boys of the vital and quickening experience of climbing a tree and feeling its friendship in the high recesses of its green foliage.

To climb a tree, to conquer a summit, to plunge into the swift current of a mountain stream. To lie down on wild grass, to smell a flower without plucking it, to eat the ripe fruit fresh from the tree. To breathe nature, to feel spaces, to grip life. Invitation to reality, to fullness, to the fat of the land and the banquet of creation. But they forbid us to climb trees. And we miss the experience. Life in nature reflects once more the life of grace. Also in our prayer life our teachers load us with precepts, impose discipline, draw barriers, teach rules; and in practice they deprive us of the direct experience of the realities of the spirit. Do not climb the tree. Enough for you to be allowed to glimpse it from afar. The direct experience of God is only for the mystics and the saints. Do not come near. Do not presume to tread grounds where angels do not dare. Be satisfied with the obscurity of faith and the glimpse of hope. Keep your distance. Worship from afar. Do not draw near. So we are told, and so we do. And we miss the climbing of the tree.

Leo Buscaglia went to see the boy expelled from the school, and gave him back his smile when he told him: ‘Now you have fifteen days to yourself to climb trees!’