Inquiring into arresting moments over time: Towards an understanding of stability within change

•We offer an in-depth account of “arresting moments”, i.e. moments where something extraordinary spontaneously occurs.•The empirical account illustrates how the experience of arresting moments over time can function as a vitality mechanism for stability within change to occur.•To better understand the possibility of dialogic encounters, there is a need to understand the on-going forces of disruption and flow, as well as forces of sameness and sharedness.•To engage in research about dialogic encounters in the present, a sensitive and listening stance is of significance.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to current knowledge about special moments – what is referred to as “arresting moments” – when something unexpected spontaneously occurs, by exploring how such moments are part of a dialogic flow taking place over time. Based on a collaborative study that has been going on for 15 years and Bakhtin’s work on dialogic forces, the paper contributes with a conceptualization of “stability within change,” which shows how arresting moments not only create newness but also a sense of stability; a strong feeling of knowing how to meet the future and thereby how to move on here and now. Thus, it is not a question of stability or change, but rather an intertwined manifold of opposing forces of stability within change. Implications for practice and research are elaborated upon.