The Meaning Behind "Lesser Kingdom"

It's kind of a doozy of a name, isn't it? Bit of a mouthful. A bit less romantic. A bit more cling-clang, heavy metal.

streaming everywhere July 13th - presave TODAY

Of all the songs I have released this year, "Lesser Kingdom" is by far the strongest example of my songwriting. Everything regarding the arrangement, lyrically, harmonically, melodically, points to what goes on inside my head under the most inspired circumstances, when an artist really gets into the "flow zone."

Musicality aside, it also reveals the things I think about and existential issues I have worked through as a being of consciousness.

Some people write songs about heartbreak and romance and revenge - this is a song about seeing one's existence on a vertical plane, rather than getting stuck in the horizontal.

You can listen and download it to own right now on Patreon.

In 2018, like most college graduates who launch into the working world as fledgling adults, I was introduced to the reality of the political divide that separated me from...well, all the people I began realizing looked at me as their enemy.

And the problem was, that in response to their hostility towards people like me, my human response was to start mirroring that aggression back, and I felt the polarity of tribalism starting to seep in and affect my mundane interactions, always wondering if the person I was interacting with on the other side would reject me if they really knew who I was ideologically.

That frustration of flesh versus blood started to eep into any time I tried to spend devoted to the study of God's word or even plain prayer journaling... This practice that had once always offered me so much catharsis was getting drowned out and overwhelmed by the growing awareness of this conflict of ideas I found myself a part of on this side of heaven.

I remember the day this interaction occurred so vividly. I was living in Round Rock, Texas, and it was a very crisp fall day. I had sat down to attempt to read some scripture, and it just wasn't taking. I gave up to the mental overload and actually said out loud, "God, how is it that I'm expected to be in the world but not of the world? Am I really expected to turn a blind eye?"

I finally vocalized to God my indignation towards the impossible task of somehow being aware of worldly conflict yet grounded enough in peace to not let it disturb you, like is asked of us in verse after verse:

Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. John 14:1

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. John 17:14-19

Often paraphrased to "being in the world, but not of the world." My cognitive dissonance was at all an all-time high.

It wasn't but two seconds later where I felt/heard this in response:

"You are right to care...just don't get caught up in the lesser kingdom."

And that phrasing was so out of my normal vocabulary that I remember being so caught off guard at feeling like I had genuinely had a conversation with another person when it was me all by myself in that room.

But the idea struck - if there is a lesser kingdom, there is a higher, and what I had the potential within me to do was to forsake the superior for the inferior.

So I wrote this song as a means of trying to unpack what was a one-sentence peace-delivering word of advice from God.

Here's a line from the song:

You and I are not so different/

Not so distant/

Over both, our rights have been won.

May I not be so wise in my own eyes and get lost in a lesser kingdom