Reverend Timothy Himei

I was pleased to meet Rev. Timothy Himei in Tokyo, especially to hear about the story of his conversion to Christianity as a young man. He started taking Bible study lessons when a friend suggested it was a free way to learn English...and the teacher served a free dinner. One night when he was the only one who stayed for dinner, the teacher called him in privately; she was clearly unimpressed with his progress in understanding Christian principles, and she prayed for Timothy. That was when he felt the Holy Spirit envelop him and he accepted Christ in that moment.

Well, free English lessons and dinner? There are more indirect ways to be led to a spiritual awakening!

The whole notion of conversion is less frequent in the experience of Jews since Judaism is not currently a proselytizing religion. In fact, a rabbi is directed to turn away a potential convert three times before agreeing to take them on as a student...and then it usually takes a full year to convert. The only converts to Judaism I knew while growing up were those who converted for marriage. My dear friend, Dr. Anne Harbison, did research while at Harvard Divinity School which taught me Judaism actually did have periods of active proselytizing when it was a dominant religion in a land, but it created more barriers and exclusivity in times when it was a minority, such as today.

My experience since my 30s is that the will of a Higher Power is done in ways that are not always explainable. One of the most beautiful concepts for me as I listen to stories of faith is that of grace. I think of grace as the unearned spiritual gift of which you cannot demand or even expect. I believe the personal transformation that comes from a conversion experience is grace. In fact, sometimes grace can be quite inconvenient, like the story of Paul’s conversion in the New Testament.

The definitive study of spiritual experiences such as conversion is actually in a fairly old book. It was published in 1902 by the Harvard psychologist and philosopher, William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature. It is a compilation of 12 lectures given at the University of Scotland, Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology, which continue to this day. A dear friend’s daughter would read this book to help her go to sleep! In Lecture Nine, William James describes the conversion experience beautifully:

This won’t come as a surprise, but James’s book was a great inspiration for Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Wilson actually relied upon William James’s description that there are two kinds of spiritual experiences: the sudden, overwhelming kind, and, the slow gradual kind. Here’s what Wilson wrote in Appendix II to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous:

So whether it is sudden, like Rev. Himei’s experience, or slow and gradual, I love William James’s description in Lecture Ten of what is common to most conversion experiences:

1. The central one is the loss of all the worry. The sense that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the willingness to be, even though the outer conditions should remain the same. 

2. The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before. The mysteries of life become lucid...and often, nay usually, the solution is more or less unutterable in words.

3. A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often appears to undergo. ‘An appearance of newness beautifies every object,’ the precise opposite of that other sort of newness, that dreadful unreality and strangeness in the appearance of the world, which is experienced by melancholy patients.

4. The most characteristic of all the elements of the conversion crisis, and the last one of which I shall speak, is the ecstasy of happiness produced. 

There is no more famous spiritual awakening recorded than that of Trappist monk Thomas Merton. It happened when he was running errands in the downtown shopping district of Louisville, Kentucky in 1958. He’d already converted to Catholicism, and had become a monk and a priest some years earlier. But this further spiritual transformation was the most impactful that Merton experienced.  

Many of us would consider these more typical of Christian conversion experiences. But my own experience now, having gone around the world collecting these sacred stories and experiencing my own personal transformation over time, is that when a spiritual experience takes hold of someone, it reorders them in a way that cannot be explained. Problems seem to slip away and life’s agitations somehow get resolved with ease. Acceptance of others and their idiosyncrasies seems easier. Having healthy boundaries with others feels more natural even when others set their boundaries. For me, this kind of realization is ultimately true whether a spiritual awakening is a sudden conversion  or an elongated ‘educational variety’ experience. Personal transformations are not limited to any religion. Sometimes the ‘rearrangement’ comes in the form of feeling ‘at home’ after many years feeling out of place and of always searching. Sometimes the “change in consciousness” comes from giving up the negative messages of an earlier theology or earlier behaviors.

I love how at the end of my interview with Rev. Hemei that he talks about how congregants sometimes criticize him but that he still prays for them and loves them. To me, this is the true test of any spiritual conversion experience: does it make a person  more loving and more willing to serve others, especially those perceived to be “the other?” Thank you to Rev. Timothy Hemei in Tokyo for welcoming me into his church with a big open heart.