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Good morning. Every day Hirayama gets up, washes his face, trims his moustache, grabs a cup of coffee and then heads off into Tokyo to clean the public toilets. It is a job he takes with the utmost seriousness, polishing taps until they shine and even looking behind pipes with a mirror to suss out any hidden dirt. He is the subject of a lovely newly released film , Perfect Days, which vividly poses the question of what is it to live well. One of the features of Hirayama’s life is his strict adherence to routine. He always goes into the same park for his lunch break, and the same little café for his evening meal. As a person who likes routine myself I could sympathise with him. Indeed one of my half serious personal adages is ‘Find a good rut and get stuck in it.’ The point about this routine for Hirayama is that it enables him to really notice what is happening around him, the sunlight through the leaves, the shadows, the look on a child’s face. His steady routine helps him to live fully in the present. Indeed a key piece of dialogue in the film are the words ‘Next is next, now is now’. Those who practice mindfulness will feel very much at home with this way of life, and there is clearly some Buddhist influence behind the film. But I found as a Christian that it very much resonated with me as well. Christian writers talk about ‘The sacrament of the present moment’-Not in the past or the future but here, in the now, the Divine Will is to be sought. Other words came to mind from a poem by George Herbert. He writes that drudgery can become divine and Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and th' action fine. The way of life of Hirayama is clearly admirable. Yet it left me questioning . He lives alone and his is a very self-contained life. But most of us are strongly affected by the world about us, the relationships we are in, and what we see or hear about human suffering. For me the challenge is how to be part of that world, with all its emotional disturbance and at the same time to retain something of Hirayama’s inner tranquillity. I don’t think there is any easy answer but I find a clue in the parting words of Jesus to his followers: that he would give them his own peace, which the world could not give. They suggest the possibility of living in a world which does affect us and at the same time having a deeply rooted inner stability.