It isn't very often that a bishop-elect will admit to composing his sermons in a swimming pool, but the Very Rev Michael Burrows, Dean of Cork and soon to be installed as Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, isn't a "very often" kind of man.
Son of the Rev Walter Burrows, Rector of Taney in Dublin, and his wife Edna, he was schooled in a domestic atmosphere of Church of Ireland convention only mildly disturbed, it seems, by a fairly rollicking undergraduate life at Trinity.
A moderatorship in history and political science and an M.Litt. in medieval Irish history was followed - after he concluded that in the very best sense there probably wasn't anything else he wanted to do - by three years of theology.
Ordination in 1988 brought him to Cork's Douglas Union, already familiar through his uncle the Rev Jerram Burrows of the former Cork Grammar School. Following a happy return to Trinity as dean of residence he was appointed to Bandon, well known from many childhood holidays in west Cork with his mother's relatives.
His appointment as Dean at St Fin Barre's Cathedral in 2002 might have seemed a prophecy to one less self-deprecating: his two immediate predecessors there had become bishops within five years, making the cathedral something of an episcopal trampoline. But that is to deny the quality of Cork's list of deans, and also to doubt the evidence of an independence of mind achieved during those student years in which Michael Burrows had to establish his own path to an active and intellectual spirituality.
"Preaching is a kind of event", he says."There is a chemistry of the moment about it, the engagement between you and the congregation." His robust sermons may originate in many different places and may be hastily scribbled together, but their coherent structure is distinguished by insights heightened through a rich scriptural resource, by references to contemporary experiences and wide reading, and by an almost visible eagerness to recognise and engage with what is authentic.
This last attribute has also determined some of the changes he introduced to the cathedral, the most potentially provocative being his re-ordering of the annual Remembrance Sunday commemoration service. A gift for good timing and a habit of consultation ensured that this adjustment, combined with a greater involvement in the national commemoration each July, was accepted without resentment. His intention, as he explained at the time, was to "remember more authentically", to experience the Remembrance event in the context of Ireland as it is today.
Equally, his introduction of a charge for visitors to the cathedral, designed by William Burges and one of Cork's major tourist attractions, might have alienated the congregation were it not for the practicality of his approach. Only two ministers - himself and his vicar the Rev Helene Steed - run the building, its many services and associated duties.
The continual deficit in what Burrows describes as "the grocer's shop side of the business" added immeasurably to this burden, but now the entry fee and improvements which reduced insurance costs mean that his stewardship ends with the building in a state of financial stability.
Because the Dean's Chapel remains always available for prayer, the atmosphere of the cathedral as a place of worship has not been diminished. In fact, as he had hoped, the quality of the visitor's experience has been enhanced by the change.
It has been enhanced too by what Michael Burrows himself sees as a more important innovation - the installation of a tall brass candlestand near the side altar. The only item in this Victorian Gothic building to be inscribed in Irish, it is a response to what the dean sees as an almost universal instinct to throw a light in the shadows, like a link between the people from so many varied backgrounds who wander inside. Another link was his enthusiastic dedication of the building as a venue for many events during Cork's year as European Capital of Culture for 2005.
Often absorbed by issues of what he calls "spiritual health", he was a member of the liturgical committee for the revised Church of Ireland Book of Common Prayer published in 2004 and served as a non-episcopal member of the Anglican Consultative Council.
Married to Claire and the father of four children, his pastoral sensitivity and compassion for humanity at its most vulnerable has also deepened his appreciation of ecumenism and of the work of his Catholic counterpart Bishop John Buckley. But it is his confidence in the sure ground of his own faith and his own church which fuels the insights of his sermons.
Preaching recently as a guest of St Paul's Cathedral in London he queried current Anglican obsessions and "a disinclination on the part of many people to question at all the rightness of their own favourite way of reading scripture".His theme was the importance of the "consensus fidelium", the grassroots wisdom of "commonsensical Anglicans".
In St Fin Barre's Cathedral the hassocks on the pews in the nave are embroidered with the words "kneel and pray"; in the front row, however, the words are "stand and think". Dean Michael Burrows might amend both to the single word "think". In liturgical terms he sees the middle ground as a place with its own integrity in which inherited values can be expressed, and expanded, with a sense of responsible freedom.
As he leaves Cork, with some regret, the middle ground is that large space described in his sermon at St Paul's: a "generous, inclusive, spacious classical Anglicanism".