Tintoretto, Cancer, and the Kairos Conception
The Annunciation, Jacobo Tintoretto, 1583–7, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Of all the annunciations ever captured in art, Tintoretto’s must be one of the most arresting. The imagery may not speak today exactly as it did to those who first stood in front of this canvas in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, but it still has the power to stir us.
In sixteenth-century Venice, Tintoretto’s audience would have been used to much quieter annunciation scenes. They would have been expecting the tiptoeing, filligreed interiors and hushed devotion of mediaeval and early Renaissance annunciations. The emotion and dynamism of Tintoretto’s interpretation must have taken their breath away. Gone are the Botticelli and Fra Angelico annunciations in which a flutter of wings and a polite cough were sufficient to get Mary’s attention. Immaculate though they were, Tintoretto has no time for them. His archangel comes crashing in, streaming cherubs in his wake, heralding a conception of an entirely new kind.
Tintoretto brings home the ramifications viscerally and we are swept up into the drama; startled and struck; not only by the light of this announcement, but by the ruin which accompanies it.
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Anyone who has been on the receiving end of a cancer diagnosis also knows something of the devastation and disorientation depicted here. This announcement is also impossible to take in. The mainstays which held up the walls and ceiling of your life are toppled. Your work is thrown down; the colour seeps from your face. Your throat tightens, your breathing becomes shallow, you recoil inwardly as if to protect yourself from the impact of a physical blow. Tintoretto captures the turmoil, but this is no painting. This is real life. Here there is no angel and no dove of peace.
The momentum of your life – that life in which you took health and a future blithely for granted – has been rudely interrupted, and, like Mary in the painting, part of you is cowering, refusing to look at this Great Incomprehensible that has suddenly broken in. What, then, are you to make of it? One moment you are living your normal life, the next you are lying in a hospital bed recovering from an operation, and facing weeks of radiotherapy. How can this have happened?
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The initial shock of the diagnosis has begun to wear off and I’m now starting to learn to navigate my new world. Entering the hospital you’re welcomed by a wide open, sky-lit atrium; rooms for creative activities, and areas for silence and meditation. There’s a restaurant with healthy food, comfortable chairs, quiet work pods, and there are friendly volunteers to direct you to the right department if you get lost.
The hospital system moves me along efficiently enough, and I know very well how lucky I am, not only to have the opportunity for this treatment, but also not to have had to wait months before receiving it. Everyone is being very kind, but this is when the industrial scale of cancer hits me. It’s one thing to know the statistics, it’s quite another to find yourself among them. I understand the reason for the streamlining, the doctors have clearly got their hands full and are working under huge pressure. The speed with which they have to make decisions is frightening. Do they see it as I see it, I wonder: the factory conveyor belt? Do they feel the pressure, as I do? Or have they developed immunity to this?
Moving from nurse to nurse, getting weighed, measured, and scanned, I discover I’ve received a new identity. Photos have been taken and I now have a patient number. It’s the first thing I’m asked for as I check in. My appointment card gets stamped every time I arrive, and the stamps line up under each other like visas stamped on the pages of a passport, confirming my eligibility to enter and leave the hospital domain. As I move along the corridors, following in the footsteps of thousands of others, from one department to the next, I’m trying to assimilate explanations about what’s going on through the filter of a language – the medical language – which I don’t speak or understand.
There are large photos on the corridor walls; bright, colourful photos of smiling, healthy-looking ex-patients. I consider them as I come and go. Each of them tells a brief life story. Their sunlit faces gaze out at me encouragingly, and their message is clear. They have recovered; they are on the ‘other side’ of all these treatments. They are in the after phase; as in living happily…
This is the main casualty of a cancer diagnosis: the end of the fairy-tale future. The end of the illusion of invincibility. I’ve always known that I’m not immortal of course, but now, I can’t avoid knowing that I know. The hospital forces me to absorb it, along with the fear which naturally accompanies it. And part of me also recognizes that, actually, it’s a bit of a relief to be able to admit it. There’s something else too, although it feels strange to admit it: alongside the shock, there’s also curiosity; a sense of aliveness and possibility; even of adventure.
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Life has now begun to revolve around my daily trips to the hospital for radiotherapy treatments, and a new routine establishes itself. I’m starting to gather my resources. Despite the stress of what’s going on (or perhaps because of it), I find myself slipping naturally into a moment-by-moment attending. Each detail passes before me as if in single frames: my hand on a door knob; steam rising from a bowl of soup; the bright crimson of a woman’s scarf… Meditation has been part of my life for almost 30 years, but now, it’s no longer a ‘practice’, now it’s for real, almost like a partner in the process, and I’m so thankful to have the accompaniment of this practice.
This morning, as I’m lying alone in the treatment room, bare-chested on the radiation table, I bring my attention to the x-ray machine as it shunts, clicks and whirls around my body. I say a deep, inward thank you to everything which comes into view: each screw, each nut, each bolt. Thankfulness then begins to expand to include all the people who work in the factories which make these machines; all the people who design, assemble and transport them. Slowly, gratitude seems to flow into a wave of generosity which just goes on expanding, until I’m nothing other than a pure, all-pervading pulsation of heartfelt being.
When the nurse comes to help me off the table, she notices tears rolling down my cheeks and I know she thinks they must be tears of sadness. They are actually tears of joy. By the time I leave the radiology department, my whole inner environment has changed from one of fear to one of radiance. And I can’t explain it to myself.
Nothing has been solved on a practical level – the problem of cancer, the questions about treatment, and future uncertainties all remain. But still, something fundamental has changed. I know now that perspectives and perceptions can shift. There’s another way of seeing, which has nothing to do with the story of cancer; this is the great happiness of what has just happened. I now know tha t even here, even in the midst of circumstances as challenging as these, I’m not limited to a patient identity, at the mercy of hospital procedures and power. I’ve become aware of another power; a radically new perspective has opened up. I can go from feeling frozen to being radiant.
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Some new elements in Tintoretto’s Annunciation open up. Here too, there is a shift of perception. The disorder of the domestic scene which first caught my attention is still here in the painting: the broken timbers, the crumbling masonry, and the upset household. But I also notice that I’m not confined to the purely temporal scene. Here, too, there’s a wider view available.
The archangel comes rushing in, tumbling cherubs in his wake. Catching a glimpse of it, Tintoretto doesn’t hesitate. Being the master of perspective that he is, he makes himself one with the exuberance of his insight; animates the moment and opens out the space. Aligned with his talent, his colours, and the mighty force of his insight, he bends tradition and all the rules of decorum. The viewer is swung up into space and given a bird’s eye view. I’m now looking down on the Virgin and the dove. I’m now looking down even onto the backs of angel wings.
What’s being heralded here is a shift of perspective. This annunciation is a kairos moment. Kairos is an ancient Greek term meaning the right, opportune, or fortuitous moment. It suggests a moment out of time; perceived only in the heart.
What Tintoretto captures is not only a one-time, historical, biblical Annunciation, but an existential one. Whether it occurs in seventeenth-century Venice, or twenty-first-century Amsterdam, the question which the angel brings is: Are you willing to allow creation through this moment? Are you able to accept the present circumstances, however they might appear, as the raw material of transformation?
This kairos conception is an enlarged vision: this moment can include everything, even cancer. There may be shock, even terror; but creation can’t happen without disruption. Life can’t generate and re-generate unless we’re willing to be a vessel for it. With every change in life comes resistance; this can’t be avoided.
Naturally, you freeze. But the opportunity and invitation of the kairos moment remain: can you admit the chaos of not knowing and align yourself with it? Chaos not only incapacitates, it can also loosen rigid thinking. The gift, and opportunity of this moment may be to see that you are no longer confined to the script. Can you admit that your story is not set, or static? Can you tell yourself you are fine, and keep breathing?
Heartfelt gratitude towards whatever this moment brings marks the end of resistance, warms the body, and brings courage in its wake. Gratitude allows the generosity of life to flow more freely and expansively. Moved by this, you may see that each moment holds its own eternity; its own mysterium. You may realize that you are a large-souled, magnanimous being, and that your Yes matters.
The ground may feel as if it’s dropping away under you. The walls of your life may feel as though they are collapsing. The table on which you're lying shifts and clicks into position. The gorgon comes around whirring, shunting, and buzzing. Dare to look her in the eye. Welcome the nails, the nuts, and bolts of her; welcome her wholeheartedly with your bright vision. She may not be what she seems. This is the kairos moment; the rite of passage. And you may conceive it, right here, right now, as never before.
The angel speaks; the soul is magnified.
How do you respond?
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