DIETERICH - Looking for the meaning of life in gingerbread sounds like a sweet waste of time.

And then you cast your eyes upon the latest festive treatment from Dr. Ruben Boyajian, and all things seem possible.

The Effingham general surgeon recently finished creating a gingerbread version of St. Aloysius Church in the country near Dieterich. Which is like saying Michelangelo could sculpt and Rembrandt knew how to paint; true as far as it goes, but far from doing justice to the reality of their art.

This gingerbread masterpiece is in precise 1/24 scale. The 1893 church's weathered red brick construction is picked out in a mixture of egg white and food coloring used to delineate each brick, all 12,000 of them.

The doctor was ably assisted in this part of the process by his wife, Emily. The entire construction process took 240 hours to complete.

More than a century ago, immigrant Catholic German farmers spent $14,500 to build the original church with the big steeple that rises like a shout to God from the surrounding prairie. Now, it's calling again in the sweet voice of confectionery, the gingerbread version on display through January at Wright's Furniture in Dieterich.

"I was drawn to it because it's a beauty, a jewel in the middle of a cornfield," Boyajian says. "And I really like how this one turned out: I tried to translate into its construction a feel for the people who live around there and their enthusiasm for this beautiful place."

There is the scent of deeper life lessons in this gingerbread, too. Boyajian, whose previous creations stretching back 16 years include other local churches and the White House, sees gingerbread as a metaphor for existence: lovely, but fleeting. He takes pictures of what he creates but says it's difficult to preserve the originals for very long. Like all humanity, they proceed inevitably toward dissolution.

"I have like a fatal attraction to creating something that is not permanent," the doctor explains. "You work hard to build something that is at once precious and brittle, like human life. You have to treasure it while you can."

And there is much to treasure in the gingerbread St. Aloysius. From the cross on the top of the steeple to every window and trim detail, it's all there. Boyajian, assisted by an expert friend, Ed Baumgarten, shot careful pictures of the original church and, using a computer program, turned them into blueprints for building his sweet re-creation.

About the only nonedible bits are the stained glass windows. The originals were photographed, their images transferred to a celluloid-like material, and then it was all hand-colored to simulate a stained-glass effect. The windows give onto a lighted interior, where a scattering of the faithful are seated on pews. Seen from a distance, with its windows aglow, the effect is magical.

Karen Brumleve, who works in sales at Wright's Furniture, says visitors find it all a feast for the eyes.

"One man, I think he was from Iowa or someplace, he went out to the real church first to see how exact this version is," Brumleve said. "He said it was perfect, even noticing how a little window at the back of the church is shown just exactly like it is on the real thing."

She says Boyajian has told them it doesn't matter if this church of the immaculate confection is damaged when it comes time to move it out of the store. "You know what he says about gingerbread, that it's made to enjoy now, just like life."

But while life is destined to be fleeting, the doctor says that shouldn't be true of some of the marvelous things that life creates, such as architecturally significant buildings. He's part of a group of historical enthusiasts trying to save the circa-1872 Effingham County Courthouse, which they would like to turn into a museum and others would prefer to transmute into rubble.

"Some people are bulldozers by temperament," Boyajian laments. "I think societies that have no respect for history have no respect for themselves."

It's going to take abut $1.5 million to save the building, and it's not clear if that money can be found. Whatever the case, Boyajian says he won't sit idly by and watch the courthouse go the way of all gingerbread.

"If they try to demolish it, I am going to tie myself to the building, and they will have to pull it down over my body," he says and manages a faint smile.

treid@herald-review.com|421-7977