Touching the Rock

What happens to your sense of self, space, and time when the world you once saw disappears? In Touching the Rock, theologian John M. Hull invites readers into the lived reality of blindness—not as a condition to be pitied, but as a transformation of perception and being. Hull’s chronicles, recorded on cassette tapes after he became totally blind, form a meditation on how a human mind and spirit can adapt to unimaginable loss and even find meaning within it.

Through vivid reflections—alternately lyrical, philosophical, and confessional—Hull shows that blindness is not simply the absence of sight. It is the construction of an entirely new world: a world of sound instead of vision, of time instead of space, and of vulnerability that reveals deep interdependence. The book’s fragmented structure, reflecting Hull’s daily recordings, makes the reading feel like entering his consciousness as it evolves from despair toward profound acceptance.

From Sighted Person to Whole-Body Seer

Hull begins by describing the gradual erosion of his vision, culminating in total blindness at age forty-five. He chronicles the dissolution of visual memory: faces become dusty portraits; landscapes lose dimension; even the memory of his own face fades. This loss strips away identity, forcing him to reconstruct what it means to be a person who exists in the world. Hull calls this journey “a passage from being a sighted person who cannot see to being a blind person.” In his final understanding, blindness is not just loss—it is rebirth. He becomes what he calls a “whole-body-seer,” experiencing through touch, hearing, smell, and time rather than light.

He discovers that space contracts but time expands. Each step demands concentration and cannot be hurried, giving his movements a ritualistic rhythm. Ordinary tasks stretch into meditations. For sighted people, time is something to be conquered; for Hull, time becomes the medium of life itself. The world comes to him in sound and sensation—fleeting, alive, and ever-changing. When he sits in a park, the bustle of footsteps, rustle of newspaper, and rhythm of wind form a landscape as vivid as any vista once seen.

Relearning Love, Fatherhood, and Work

Family grounds Hull’s reflections. He writes as a husband and father of developing children who are learning what it means to have a blind father. Through moments of confusion (“When I close my eyes, you can’t see me”) and tenderness (“Show Daddy”), blindness becomes a shared education in communication and empathy. His son learns to lead him with small tugs of the hand; his daughter asks why he can’t smile back. These encounters reveal how love adapts when vision vanishes—it moves through sound, touch, and ritual instead of sight.

In work, Hull refuses to surrender intellectual life. He continues lecturing at the University of Birmingham, devising new methods: dictating lectures from memory, navigating campuses by habit, and reorganizing teaching materials into tapes. Blindness forces efficiency of a different kind—a deliberate slowness that yields precision and depth. (Oliver Sacks, in his foreword, called this Hull’s “journey into deep blindness,” where the visual mind is replaced by other forms of awareness.)

Religion, Meaning, and Transformation

A theologian by training, Hull wrestles throughout with whether blindness has meaning. He rejects shallow comfort—faith healers promising sight or friends who call blindness “God’s punishment.” Over time, he comes to view blindness not as a curse but as a terrible gift, something that strips life down to its essence. “Faith,” he concludes, “is not seeing light in the darkness; it is knowing that darkness and light are both alike to God.” His reflections intertwine phenomenology and spirituality, showing that losing sight can paradoxically reveal new ways of seeing.

Through dreams, diaries, and meditations, Hull documents the transformation of a mind rebuilding its world from within. Like Helen Keller’s or Jacques Lusseyran’s works, his testimony transcends disability memoir—it becomes a study of consciousness itself. Touching the Rock challenges us to reconsider what it means to perceive, to know, and to love in a world where vision is not the measure of reality.

Hull’s earliest writings depict blindness as an annihilation of the visual self. Having been sighted for four decades, he begins losing his vision in stages. At first, he still dreams in pictures; his mind retains color, shape, and spatial depth. But gradually, these inner images fade. Faces blur and vanish—first those of new acquaintances, then even those of his wife and children. He describes it as walking through a gallery where the portraits are replaced by blank frames labeled with names. The emotional climax comes when he can no longer recall his own face, realizing he may become “a blank on the wall of my own gallery.”

This erasure of imagery does not merely remove memories; it dismantles his sense of identity. A person’s face is, for most sighted people, both self-knowledge and mirror of relationship. Without it, Hull feels ghostly—“a spirit, a voice without a body.” He experiences echoes of this loss in everyday conversation: words like “I see,” “looks like,” or “face to face” remind him how sight saturates language and social presence. Yet he resists letting blindness rob him of humanity, insisting he will continue to use sighted metaphors as his right to the shared language.

Losing Faces, Recovering Voices

Hull learns to replace visual memory with auditory intimacy. The voice becomes the new mirror of the soul. Where once he knew people by their faces, he now knows them by the music of their voices—their emotional pitch, rhythms, and vocabulary. He notices that the voice can reveal tiredness, kindness, or deceit as clearly as a face once did. However, he remains dependent on others to speak; silence erases them from his world. In a crowded bar, he feels invisible until someone calls his name.

His dreams dramatize this transition: first, he dreams vividly of faces; later, his dreams lose imagery altogether, becoming sensations of movement, sound, and thought. Eventually, even imagination ceases to be visual. The inner eye has gone dark, but in its place comes an acute sense of the living presence of sound—a whole new realm of perception Hull calls “acoustic space.”

The Language of Blindness

By exploring this erasure, Hull reveals how vision underpins our shared reality. Without that scaffolding, everyday acts—smiling, recognizing, waving—become uncertain or absurd. When people tell him “It’s a lovely day,” he realizes they mean something visual—blue sky, bright sun—whereas for him a “nice day” now means a day with a gentle breeze that animates the world. Gradually, he learns a new idiom of being, discovering that meaning does not reside in eyes but in the deliberate act of attention. Each lost image becomes replaced not by darkness but by texture, sound, and time.

One of Hull’s most profound discoveries is that blindness reshapes the way humans inhabit both time and space. For sighted people, he observes, life is spatial—full of simultaneous impressions and panoramic awareness. For the blind, that world collapses into sequence. What was once seen all at once must now be known step by step. In a poignant essay titled “Less Space, More Time,” Hull explains that while his spatial world shrank to the limits of his body, his temporal world expanded dramatically. Every journey, gesture, or conversation now unfolds through time’s patient rhythm.

The Discipline of Measured Movement

Hull cannot rush. Walking from his home to his office takes precisely twenty-two minutes. Attempting to hurry would disorient him; slowing too much would cause him to lose track of his route. His mobility becomes a sustained meditation, one that requires synchronization between memory, counting, and bodily intuition. The result is paradoxical serenity: he no longer fights against time but moves within it. For him, time is not an enemy but the medium through which life flows—“the stream of consciousness within which I act.”

The Inflation of Hours

Because each task demands extended duration, Hull observes what he calls “time inflation”—the sense that while hours become more valuable, their individual worth decreases because tasks consume so many of them. A blind person, he notes, cannot “harvest time” by hastening; everything must occur at its own pace. He compares this to his friend with multiple sclerosis, for whom tying shoelaces takes forty-five minutes, or to patients confined to hospital beds who experience endless expanses of time in confined spaces. Disability compresses space but expands time, altering consciousness itself.

Modern technology, Hull observes, seeks to compress time and expand space—fast cars, global communication, instant messaging. Blindness does the opposite: it contracts space and dilates time. This inversion separates the blind from the high-speed rhythm of modern life but also liberates them from it. As he concludes, “Sighted people fight against time; I live in it.”

In one breathtaking entry, Hull situates himself on a park bench listening to the sound-world around him—the footsteps, laughter, engines, birds, wind, and water. He realizes he occupies a purely acoustic universe. For the blind, sound is not background; it is the architecture of reality. Every sound represents an action: splashing, flapping, calling. When sound ceases, the thing itself ceases to exist. “To rest is not to be,” he writes. “Mine is not a world of being; it is a world of becoming.”

Sound as Action, Silence as Death

This acoustic existence is transient and fragile. A passing car, a birdcall, a voice—all appear in vivid immediacy and vanish into silence. Without the power of vision to hold the world steady, Hull’s environment flickers in and out of existence like musical notes. Turning his head does not reveal new vistas; the soundscape remains stable, indifferent to his orientation. This reduces his agency but elevates his receptivity. He is no longer an explorer but a listener through whom the world flows.

Rain as Revelation

Among his most radiant passages is “Rain,” where Hull steps outside into a downpour and experiences revelation. The falling water outlines every surface—the roof, path, and lawn—making the world tangible through continuous sound. “The rain gives a sense of perspective,” he writes. “It grants me the gift of the world.” For sighted people, opening curtains reveals reality; for Hull, opening the door to rain does the same. Rain transforms isolated sounds into a unified acoustic landscape, revealing continuity between self and environment. In this moment, he no longer feels imprisoned by blindness but blessed by it: sound has become light.

Blindness, Hull writes, reshapes the geography of love. His children—Imogen, Thomas, Elizabeth, Gabriel, and later Joshua—grow up learning a different language of affection. Instead of “Look, Daddy,” they say “Show Daddy,” placing objects in his hands. When Thomas leads him to school, they turn goodbyes into a call-and-response of diminishing voices until sound itself fades into the crowd—a sonic equivalent of waving. These moments, humble and intimate, are lessons in mutual adaptation.

Children Discovering Blindness

Hull records the gradual awakening of his children’s understanding. His son once jokes, “When I close my eyes, you can’t see me,” revealing the child’s assumption that vision is reciprocal. Another asks whether tears could heal his eyes, echoing the fairy tale of Rapunzel. These vignettes create a moving psychological portrait of how children translate blindness through imagination before grasping its permanence. By teaching his daughter Lizzie to read using tactile flashcards and wooden letters, he discovers he can educate through sound and touch, effectively “reading with his ears and her fingers.”

Marriage and Shared Blindness

Hull’s relationship with his wife Marilyn becomes an exercise in interdependence. She must often act as his eyes, interpreting the faces and gestures of others, while he strives not to become a burden. Yet their intimacy deepens through touch, humor, and resilience. In dreams, his anxiety surfaces—fearing he might lose Marilyn “through blindness”—only to be reassured that love persists beyond sight. Through these relationships, Hull demonstrates that blindness is not the extinction of connection but its transformation. Love reorganizes itself around new senses.

Throughout the journal, Hull wrestles with religion. As a theologian, he cannot ignore the spiritual dimensions of his condition. Early on, he rejects those who attribute blindness to sin or offer miraculous cures. Instead, he reframes blindness as a moral and metaphysical question: How can one find meaning in what cannot be changed? His answer evolves from resistance to acceptance, and finally, to gratitude.

From Rebellion to Reverence

In moments of despair, Hull likens blindness to being entombed underground, cut off from the living. He refuses both resignation and denial—“If I were to accept this thing,” he writes, “I would die.” Gradually, however, he discovers that faith is not submission but transformation: belief does not restore sight but confers meaning on its absence. Blindness becomes a kind of monastic calling—an enforced contemplation that strips away illusion and teaches presence.

The Gift that Breaks and Heals

Eventually, Hull names blindness “a dark, paradoxical gift.” In a vision during Mass at Notre Dame in Montreal, listening to organ music, he feels enveloped by divine presence and whispers, “I accept the gift.” Blindness, he realizes, is the wrapping paper; the interior gift is peace. Like the Eucharist, it breaks those who accept it but renews them inwardly. Faith, for him, means recognizing that both light and darkness are held equally in God’s knowing. This spiritual insight allows him to move beyond seeking cures toward living fully within his condition—a reconciliation of body, mind, and spirit.

Blindness, Hull explains, disrupts not only personal identity but social belonging. In casual gatherings, he becomes either invisible or overly conspicuous. People talk about him instead of to him—“Will you put him in the car?” Others treat him like a child, guiding too firmly or speaking in patronizing tones. Yet the opposite also occurs: fear, curiosity, and guilt make sighted people overcompensate with exaggerated attention. For Hull, both responses deny equality.

Training the Sighted

Hull humorously recounts teaching colleagues how to guide him properly: “I have to train people the way they train guide dogs for the blind,” he jokes. With patience and grace, he demonstrates how to let a blind person hold an elbow rather than be dragged, or how to place his hand on a chair instead of pushing him into it. These micro-encounters expose the psychology of the sighted—their discomfort when confronted with vulnerability. As Hull notes, disability makes others aware of their own fragility; they respond with pity or avoidance to shield themselves from fear.

The Struggle for Normalcy

At university and social events, Hull faces constant navigation between dependence and autonomy. He invents a technique he calls his “litmus test”: asking friends to find someone he can speak with, so he can move socially instead of being trapped with one conversation partner. This small act restores agency. Still, he senses that social order itself is a visual performance; without sight, he must reconstruct belonging through sound and conversation. Blindness, he concludes, is not just a loss of eyes but an exile from the dominant form of human interaction—the gaze.

Hull’s dream journal forms a symbolic counterpoint to his daily reflections. In dreams, he sometimes regains sight—seeing his children’s faces or bright landscapes—only to awaken blind again. These “big dreams,” as Jung might call them, dramatize his psychic struggle. One dream shows his family stranded on a sinking ship as another departs into the distance—a haunting metaphor for being left behind in blindness. Another depicts him exploring an abbey and discovering a massive marble altar by touch, suggesting spiritual discovery through sensual exploration.

From Visual Dreams to Inner Vision

As time passes, Hull’s dreams undergo transformation: early ones remain visual; later ones become tactile and auditory. His unconscious accepts blindness even when his conscious self resists. The dreamer learns new forms of perception before the waking mind does. In one dream, while making love in a pub, he hears himself described as “the blind man at the bar”—a mixture of shame and identity acceptance. In another, he rejoices at seeing his daughter, only to discover she has one blind eye, symbolizing continuity and shared vulnerability between them.

Blindness as Mythic Descent

Hull interprets recurring imagery—water, descent, tunnels, and submersion—as archetypes of transformation. Blindness is a descent into the underworld of consciousness, a journey akin to mythic initiations where sight is traded for wisdom. Like Homer’s Tiresias or Borges’s blind storyteller, Hull becomes simultaneously less worldly and more visionary. Through dreams, he reconciles loss and meaning, turning despair into a pilgrimage inward.

As blindness matures into Hull’s new normal, his senses reorganize around touch. The body becomes the instrument of knowing. “If my hands are full,” he explains, “I am blindfolded.” Every texture—wood, metal, fabric—becomes meaningful. Touch is not secondary to sight; it is a modality of intelligence. Through touch, he experiences pleasure again—feeling carved owls, clay pots, or the breath of wind on his skin. He calls this “the art of gazing with the hands.”

The Body as Organ of Sense

Hull compares notes with a paraplegic friend who feels detached from his own body. By contrast, blindness encloses consciousness within the body but separates it from external space. “He had no body to walk with,” Hull writes of his friend, “I have no world to walk in.” This inversion reveals two kinds of alienation: loss of body versus loss of world. Blindness fuses perception and embodiment so closely that the boundary between self and environment dissolves. Rain fall, wind, or vibration merges with his skin; the world touches back.

Reclaiming Pleasure and Presence

By attending to texture, rhythm, and shape, Hull rediscovers sensuality. His descriptions of rainfall, wind, or the warmth of sunlight are erotic in their detail, turning sensory deprivation into sensory fulfillment. This awakening restores the body as home of consciousness. Blindness, once a prison, becomes a dwelling. Ultimately, Hull’s tactile awareness completes his metamorphosis into the “whole-body-seer”—a new kind of perceiver who experiences the world not through detached observation but through immersive presence.

In the final chapters and postscript, Hull steps beyond autobiography into philosophy. Blindness, he argues, is one of the “orders of human being,” like youth or age, masculinity or femininity. It is not merely a defect but a distinct mode of existence with its own integrity. To live as a blind person is to inhabit a world made of time, sound, and touch. This world is authentic and complete, though dependent on the larger sighted world around it. The challenge is mutual understanding without pity or jealousy—to bridge two worlds through respect.

A Vision of Integration

Hull insists that the goal is not overcoming blindness but integrating it into the totality of life. “Meaning,” he writes, “is conferred after the event.” Only through retrospective reflection—what he calls “retrovidence”—can we perceive providence within accident. Happiness is fortuitous; meaning is conferred. Faith, therefore, is creative: it transforms chance into purpose. Blindness teaches him that suffering, like darkness, can be transfigured into knowledge.

Touching the Rock

The book’s title phrase symbolizes this ultimate insight. To “touch the rock” is to encounter the bedrock of reality—what remains when illusions of light and control are gone. Hull ends not in despair but in communion: “If a journey into light is a journey into God, then a journey into darkness is a journey into God.” In accepting blindness as vocation, Hull becomes both philosopher and mystic. His exploration of darkness illuminates what it means to perceive, to love, and to be human. For readers, sighted or not, his journey invites a radical reimagining of what seeing truly is.