Touching the Rock

Outline

Touching the Rock (1990) is a moving account of the author’s experience of losing his sight in middle age. Drawing on diaries he recorded on audio tape, John M. Hull describes how blindness changed his sense of time, space, memory, relationships, and faith. Rather than presenting blindness only as loss, the book explores it as a different way of being in the world, and later inspired the film Notes on Blindness.

• John M. Hull lost his sight in middle age and kept a record of the experience in diaries on audio tape.
• Blindness changed his sense of time, space and memory, not only what he could see.
• Hull describes how losing his sight reshaped his relationships and his faith.
• The book treats blindness as a different way of being in the world, not only as loss.
• Touching the Rock was published in 1990 and later inspired the film Notes on Blindness.

John M. Hull (1935–2015) was an Australian-born theologian and professor of religious education at the University of Birmingham in England. After losing his sight in the early 1980s, he recorded audio diaries that became the basis for Touching the Rock. His reflections influenced discussions of disability, faith, and perception.