{"id":23445,"date":"2025-02-20T23:57:05","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T06:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/four-friends-compose-anthology-of-the-four-corners\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:36:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:36:29","slug":"four-friends-compose-anthology-of-the-four-corners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/four-friends-compose-anthology-of-the-four-corners\/","title":{"rendered":"Four friends compose anthology of the Four Corners"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Carole
Carole Hitti (top left), Chris Cholas (top right), Robin Richardson (bottom right), and Mark Reddy (bottom left) met from different cities via Zoom to compile their anthology over a two-year period. (Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

More than two years and hundreds of Zoom calls later, a 300-page compilation of Four Corners stories is now published, and four friends worked together to make it happen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s called Bah\u00e1\u2019\u00ed Stories and Reflections Updated from the Center of the Four Corners: Shared Accounts of the Bah\u00e1\u2019\u00ed Faith<\/em>, and is available on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a \u201cpolished history of Four Corners area,\u201d said author Mark Reddy.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s an anthology of the region from the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed perspective, said author Chris Cholas, and \u201cwe included everyone\u2019s story that we could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed (ba-hi) is \u201ca world religion that has no clergy,\u201d Reddy said. \u201cSo every individual is both a student of the faith and a teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Its basic teaching is that all the great prophets \u2013 think Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad, Jesus \u2013 were sent from the same God. Followers of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed faith believe that Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h, the faith\u2019s founder, is the most recent manifestation of God.<\/p>\n

And as far as religions go, it\u2019s quite new. It started in Persia, or present-day Iran, 200 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way we spread the faith is by traveling and settling in different places, and so on,\u201d said Reddy.<\/p>\n

\"The
The cover of the Four Corners anthology that four friends put together. The book is more than 300 pages and is centered on the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed faith.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Years ago, Carole Hitti, the author who really spearheaded the creation of this book, was visiting with a friend, Dianne Savage. They were sharing stories and decided they ought to start writing some of them down.<\/p>\n

From there, Hitti reached out to Robin Richardson, an already published author, for help. Eventually, they asked Cholas and Reddy to join the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s grown into a big book,\u201d said Hitti.<\/p>\n

As far as finding the stories goes, Hitti said that she has \u201ca long list of friends on my phone and computer,\u201d so she went through and wrote to them, asking if they\u2019d be willing to contribute.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tracked down people by friendship,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Friendship, and email.<\/p>\n

The three other authors agreed that it was Hitti\u2019s \u201cstubborn\u201d nature that made the book a reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou normally think of stubborn as being a negative quality, but in her case it\u2019s a good quality,\u201d said Cholas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think some of you guys called me a bulldog, didn\u2019t you?\u201d Hitti laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that was Mark (Reddy),\u201d said Richardson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true,\u201d Mark conceded. \u201cBut it was your tenacity that got this thing off the ground and got it going. \u2026 I also think you\u2019re part Sherlock Holmes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hitti\u2019s sleuthing and persistence were worthwhile: They received stories from Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds in all corners of the globe, and from different time periods, too.<\/p>\n

Despite differences in space and time, all the contributors found themselves in this region at one point or another.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we\u2019d get a dozen stories or so and it\u2019d be a nice little book,\u201d Reddy said. \u201cI was impressed by the depth and scope of how many people have actually moved through or have been in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only that, they all have ties to the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed faith.<\/p>\n

Cholas said that he started collecting stories in the 1970s, and that those made up most of his contribution. He was in Durango at the time, in one of the area\u2019s first Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed clubs.<\/p>\n

Concurrently, the Vietnam War was going on and the civil rights movement was \u201cat a momentous peak,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed faith was spreading fast. It was reaching Western Colorado, of all places,\u201d Cholas remembered.<\/p>\n

He went on to say that the faith jibes with Indigenous values, and that there are many Native Americans who are also Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed.<\/p>\n

For Indigenous people coming into the faith, it\u2019s \u201ccomfortable,\u201d since it\u2019s \u201cnot really a conversion, it\u2019s a continuation of what their culture already is,\u201d said Cholas.<\/p>\n

Plus, the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed faith holds that \u201cIndigenous people will illuminate the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hitti said that sharing these stories and the sheer variety of perspectives will \u201chelp people get a better idea of the people of the world,\u201d which motivated her work.<\/p>\n

All four authors agreed that another major motivation in gathering these stories concerned time, and telling them while they still could.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a period of time to capture the first stage of a new religion,\u201d Cholas said. \u201cChristianity has it, Buddhism has it. They all have the stories from around the time of the messenger, and there shortly after.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that period of time is limited.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t catch those stories then, they might be lost forever. Part of capturing these early stories while Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed faith is still relatively new in the world \u2026 (is so) in the future, people will have these stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was important to them, then, to leave the stories \u201cin their original, unedited voices,\u201d said Reddy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe read it for accuracy, yes,\u201d Reddy said. \u201cBut we saw it more as source material for future historians or people wondering about the faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once they finished gathering the stories, their work was far from done . \u2026 But \u201cthe fun part started: How do you put it all together,\u201d said Richardson.<\/p>\n

It was Richardson\u2019s role to compile the hundreds of stories into something of a story, something digestible.<\/p>\n

The book is divided into 127 chapters, complete with a dedication, conclusion and an \u201cabout the authors\u201d page.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book reflects the growth of the faith and the depths of what its reaching now,\u201d Cholas said. \u201cIt\u2019s getting into social action and the things that are really important if we\u2019re going to have a better world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds from across the world contributed their stories and connection to this place<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78124,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23445\/revisions\/78124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23445"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}