Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness

john m. hull oliver sacks

With a foreword by Oliver Sacks

Shortly after John Hull went blind, after years of struggling with failing vision, he had a dream in which he was trapped on a sinking ship, submerging into another, unimaginable world. The power of this calmly eloquent, intensely perceptive memoir lies in its thorough navigation of the world of blindness—a world in which stairs are safe and snow is frightening, where food and sex lose much of their allure and playing with one's child may be agonizingly difficult. As he describes the ways in which blindness shapes his experience of his wife and children, of strangers helpful and hostile, and, above all, of his God, Hull becomes a witness in the highest, true sense. Touching the Rock is a book that will instruct, move, and profoundly transform anyone who reads it.

Genres nonfictionmemoirbiographypsychologydisabilityphilosophybiography memoiressayshealthscience

248 pages, Paperback

First published December 4,1990

This edition

Format: 248 pages, Paperback
Published: June 2, 1992 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780679735472
ASIN: 067973547X
Language: English

About the author

john m. hull

John Martin Hull was Emeritus Professor of Religious Education at the University of Birmingham. He was the author of a number of books and many articles in the fields of religious education, practical theology and disability. The latter interest arose from his experiences, and personal and theological reflections, on becoming blind in mid-career. He edited the British Journal of Religious Education for 25 years, and co-founded the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values, of which he was general secretary for 32 years, and president emeritus at the time of his death. After retirement he pursued a further interest as Honorary Professor of Practical Theology at the Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham, England.