#6 - Yahweh

This inspired me to draw close to our amazing God. 

#5 - VNECKS

I wear Vneck t-shirts. I've moved up in a few short years from the JV team to the varsity team, although I'm not one of the star players yet. I'd say my vneck stats land in the mid to low category. My friend  Jonathan is the captain of the team. He's rockin' them low and well. Today, thank you for vnecks. Check out this link, today Jon Acuff says it best...

http://stuffchristianslike.net/2009/10/deep-v-neck-syndrome-dvs/

Also, this is when you should go into retirement

#4 Water and Fire EP

I've had this little EP of mine sitting on the home shelf for months (ok it was on my computer, you get it!), waiting for a sunny day. Today I decided to release it! Water and Fire is a collection of acoustic songs that I put together for my lives shows. It's available on iTunes, follow the link:

ITUNES - Casey Parnell (Water and Fire)

I'll take just a second to pull apart the song "Don't Leave Me Behind" for you.  Sometimes I feel like life is passing me by, like everyone else around are moving forward while you stay in the same place. I have also felt like God is moving, and I'm stagnant. This song to me is a plea for God to stick with me, to be patient me my shortcomings, and to move me when I'm stuck. The reality is God likes me. He likes you. He's not content to leave us where we've been, but sometimes I feel that way, so I wrote about it.

#3 Inside and Out

I've been involved with music for a number of years now both inside church and outside church. What I've found that sets many artists apart is who they are both on and off stage. Years ago, we booked Mat Kearney to play at our alternative service. Watch out, this is basically a segment of VH1 "Before they were stars!"  I drove Mat around in my 1990 Subaru Legacy that had a maddening squeak around the back window that I couldn't find or fix. So I just rolled with it, and apparently so did he :) Mat had the superstar quality even back then when he was independent of a label.  When he spoke to people in private and performed on stage, he was smooth. You could tell he had star quality. People like Mat make me understand how incredibly goofy I am. Some people live life like butter, others are a sloppy pb and j.  I appreciate both the smooth and the sloppy versions of life, although sometimes I want a little more butter. That said, what I appreciated about Mat was his genuine personality. He was the same on stage as he was off, treating people with courtesy and respect. Something was obviously different about him.  All this to say, the best musicians in my opinion are the ones who walk humbly, graciously, and compassionately.  It's really not about us is it? There's a bigger picture we need to see, something greater is being built around us.  I hope that I'm fitting into that picture well.

Here's Mat fitting into this picture:

#2 - EPIC FAIL

Last night my buddy Evan told me a fascinating story from the early 1900's about the tumalo reservoir a couple miles away from my hometown of Bend, OR.  A man named A.W. Laidlaw and his company sold plots of what would be irrigated farm land from the near by tumalo creek. They sold 17,000 acres of "irrigated" farmland to people across the nation. People moved their families west from random places like Conneticut, they spent months in their wagons getting here, only to discover that the watered farmland ran to only 1,000 acres of land. Not 17,000! Most people couldn't farm. They were angry and had to take action! Laidlaw couldn't be sued because it was the rugged west, instead they burned him in effigy. What it means is they stuffed a look alike of him with straw, wrote LAIDLAW on the front of it, put a hat on him like frosty the snowman and set it on fire in the city streets.  Man, they really got him. Don't get burned in effigy. It's not good. The city of LAIDLAW lasted for only a few years, and later became what we now know of as Tumalo. Epic fail.